Your Sales Process Should Come From the Buyer Journey with Gus Byleveld
Is a former CEO and revenue operator scrappy or sophisticated? In this episode of Scrappy But Successful, host Jack Tompkins sits down with Gus Byleveld, founder of The Wondering, to find out. Gus started his career as an architect in South Africa and went on to spend more than 25 years building and leading B2B tech companies. Today he helps CEOs of growth-stage tech companies work out why growth is harder than it should be before they decide what to change. The conversation runs from a mobile trading card startup that ran on Nokia phones to AI, buyer trust, and the one discovery question Gus says changes every sales conversation.
Why the buyer journey beats the sales process
Gus built The Wondering around a simple habit: stay inquisitive about why a customer buys from you, why they would come back, and what makes you uniquely qualified to serve them. When founders tell him that hiring more salespeople did not lead to more sales, or that deals keep slipping and prospects keep ghosting, he says the root cause is usually a thin understanding of the buyer journey, not a flaw in the sales process.
He is not anti-process. His point is that a sales process should be mapped from the buyer journey rather than handed down as a set of stages by a CRM consultant, and that the journey itself keeps shifting, especially now that AI is changing how buyers research. Tools are part of the picture too. Most revenue leaders already say they have too many, so Gus asks CEOs whether their salespeople need more tools or more room to think.
He also talks about how fractional revenue operators can package what they know, not just their skills, so clients can buy it the way they want to, whether that is a project first or a fractional engagement.
Two schools of thought on AI, and the trust gap
Gus sees a pattern from his first startup, a mobile trading card platform that was ahead of its time: new technology splits people into two camps. One says you have to get involved or miss out. The other says to keep doing what you have always done because the technology threatens everything you know. The second camp gains momentum quickly because it speaks to our insecurities.
Buyers are also more informed than ever. A prospect can ask an AI tool to summarize a seller in seconds, which means the seller is no longer the only source of truth. Gus calls what is left the trust gap: why would a prospect listen to you, and why would they buy from you? His answer is that human connection matters more, not less, especially when selling complex services. He adds that treating sales as a volume game, such as chasing a higher conversion rate with more outreach, is a habit from an earlier era.
Jack adds his own observation: as AI advances, people assume buyers want automated funnels, yet they often just want to talk to a person who hears their problems.
The discovery question that makes selling personal
The question Gus says beats every other discovery question is simple: what does your world look like when I solve this for you? It makes the conversation personal, and it treats the solution as a when, not an if. Jack says he plans to start asking it himself.
Gus also likes to open meetings by asking a prospect why they took the meeting. It gets them to stop multitasking and think, and it shows what resonated. Halfway through a deal, he asks a second question: what makes me uniquely qualified to solve this problem for you? Not the best, the cheapest, or the fastest. If the prospect cannot answer, he expects either ghosting or a fight over price.
He ties this to forecasting. If a deal sits at 80 percent because it moved a stage or a proposal went out, but nobody can point to where the buyer said they would buy and why, the deal cannot really be forecast.
One shared goal: move the conversation forward
While working with one client, Gus asked the heads of marketing, BDRs, and customer success what their objectives were. Each described a team-specific target, such as giving sales 25 leads, and none said closing another customer. His fix is to ask a different question each morning: what can I do today to move the conversation with this prospect forward? Sending fifteen emails is activity, and activity is not quality.
Jack's takeaway is that even data-driven teams should think first: decide the real goal, then worry about the number and what AI does with it. Gus agrees, and notes that AI vendors promising to replace a sales team often sell tools that live inside the building, while Steve Blank and Eric Ries told founders to get out of the building and listen to customers.
The scrappy versus sophisticated lightning round got skipped because the conversation ran long, but Jack's verdict was a dash of scrappiness backed by some sophisticated thinking. Gus closes by inviting listeners to connect on LinkedIn or visit The Wondering, saying he just wants to find out whether his ideas resonate.
Comments