Category: Forum

HPS Community Forum – Free discussions on Zoom. Registration required.

Call Reluctance — A Live Demonstration by Jedediah Thomas

This HPS Community Forum will be a little different.

Many people experience some form of reluctance when it comes to making sales calls.  If that’s true for you, we invite you to join us.

Forum member Jedediah Thomas has offered to work with volunteers during the meeting using an approach he has been developing to help people move past those kinds of mental blocks.

If you choose to participate in this way, you’ll experience the process firsthand.  If not, you’re welcome to observe and decide for yourself what you think.

The conversation will take place live in our Skool community.  Anyone who wants to participate in the demonstration will need to have their camera turned on.

The following is from Jedediah:

Hi Everyone, Jedediah here.

For the last 3.5 years I’ve worked as a mindset coach, helping dozens of people overcome deep set mental blocks and emotional triggers.

I can potentially do the same for you.

If you volunteer to work with me in this session, you’ll have the opportunity to work with me one-on-one, in front of the group, on a real challenge you’re experiencing around call reluctance.

I won’t be using any hypnosis or energy work, just talking and asking questions.

We’ll be working on very surface level stuff like the actions of calling, so no need to dig up childhood wounds.

An example of something we might address: “When I think about calling this prospect, I worry what they’ll think of me or I feel like they’ll reject me.”

You don’t have to volunteer to attend, but if you are considering volunteering please RSVP so we can manage our time.

It may be that there’s only enough time to get to one shift per person, which may not fully resolve the call reluctance issue, but it may give you a leg up and will at least show you what this work can do.

If you’re not sure about volunteering until you see it in action, that’s fine too, just go ahead and RSVP as being a potential volunteer. If you plan on attending without volunteering no RSVP is needed.  

As far as preparation, be clear on what thoughts and emotions you’re running into when you start thinking about calling prospects. And please have your camera on so I can see your body language.

Also, I recommend you block off the rest of the day and not make big decisions or drive or anything because any shifts done can potentially cause fatigue or disorientation in some cases, lasting until a good night’s sleep.

Feel free to reply back ahead of time if you have any questions about the process, so you can be sure whether you want to volunteer or not.

Looking forward to potentially working together

Jedediah

Date:  Friday 28 August 2026
Time:  10 AM (USA Eastern Time)
Where:  Skool
Link:  https://www.skool.com/live/lzj8PMqFYVz

If you’re not already a member of our HPS Skool Community, you’ll need to create a free account there before joining us.  To create an account and join our community, go to https://www.skool.com/sales-training-9609/about and then click on the button that says JOIN GROUP. 

Using HPS in the World of SaaS – HPS Forum Conversation on Fri 14 Aug 2026

This will be an interactive discussion on how to use High Probability Sales principles when selling software as a service (SaaS).  We want to hear from you. 

Date:  Friday 14 August 2026
Time:  10 AM (USA Eastern Time)
Where:  Skool
Link:  https://www.skool.com/live/lzj8PMqFYVz

If you’re not already a member of our HPS Skool Community, you’ll need to create a free account there before joining us.  To create an account and join our community, go to https://www.skool.com/sales-training-9609/about and then click on the button that says JOIN GROUP. 

Comparing HPS with Popular Sales Systems

You may have experience with sales approaches such as:

  • SPIN Selling
  • The Challenger Sale
  • Sandler Selling
  • MEDDIC / MEDDPICC
  • Solution Selling

Each offers its own structure, language, and way of thinking about selling. 

However, they all have one thing in common.  They all rely on managing the conversation to make the sale happen.

That’s where High Probability Selling stands apart.

We will talk about how HPS differs from other sales systems in this week’s Forum. 

We especially want to hear about your own experiences:

  • What have you used?
  • What have you noticed?
  • What is different?
  • What does that mean to you?

Topic:  Comparing HPS with Popular Sales Systems
Date:  Friday 8 May 2026
Time:  10:00 AM (USA Eastern Time)
Cost:  Your name and email.  No charge.

The video recording of this conversation is available here for $25 USD.  Transcript and chat are included.

The 90-Day Myth — How HPS Adoption Actually Happens — Forum Conversation on Fri 1 May 2026

This Friday’s Forum:  The 90-Day Myth — How HPS Adoption Actually Happens

There’s a story that has been circulating in the HPS community for at least 30 years.

You’ve heard it. A handful of highly successful practitioners who saw the light, dropped everything, implemented HPS in its entirety, and never looked back. Total transformation. Ninety days. Done.

It’s a great story.

It’s also not how it happened.

What actually happened — almost certainly — is that HPS gave those practitioners language and structure for things they were already doing intuitively. The fit felt immediate because they were already disqualifiers at heart (or at least primed for the shift). The “transformation” was more recognition than revolution. And the messy parts — the backsliding, the hybrid period, the old habits that came roaring back the first time quota and expectations pressure spiked — those got edited out in the retelling, because they don’t make for a clean narrative.

Thirty years later, that edited version has been converted into gospel.

And it does real damage.

Because when your adoption looks nothing like that — when you’re in the messy middle, running two approaches in parallel, defaulting to old patterns under stress — the myth tells you something is wrong with you. That you’re not committed enough. That you don’t get it.

You get it fine. You’re just human. And humans don’t change in 90 days. They change the way they actually change — nonlinearly, imperfectly, and over much longer than anyone’s highlight reel suggests.

This Friday, we’re burning down the origin myth.

We’ll talk about how HPS adoption actually unfolds, why the Hollywood version persists, and what a more honest — and ultimately more useful — story might look like.

This Friday’s Community Forum — “The 90-Day Myth: How HPS Adoption Actually Happens” The truth is less sexy. It’s also a lot more helpful.

Topic:  The 90-Day Myth — How HPS Adoption Actually Happens
Date:  Friday 1 May 2026
Time:  10:00 AM (USA Eastern Time)
Cost:  Your name and email.  No charge.

The video recording of this conversation is available here for $25 USD.  Transcript and chat are included.

Assuming the Sale, The HPS Way – Forum Conversation on Fri 17 Apr 2026

HPS has a long and proud tradition of absolutes.

Never use the word “interested.” Never say “just.” Never assume the sale. Jacques Werth’s poison word list. The rules handed down from on high by white-haired gurus. Stated with authority.  Based on five decades of experience. Accepted almost immediately. Rarely examined. Only challenged in private or in our thoughts.

Here’s the thing about absolutes: they work great in a classroom. The moment you step into an actual conversation with an actual human being, who didn’t attend the same workshop, reality takes over — and absolutes help no one.

So when someone says “assume the sale,” the good HPS practitioner’s knee-jerk response is: never do that. Fair enough. But is it true? Always? In every context? 

Or is the real answer — as it so often is — a matter of degrees, definitions, and the situation you’re actually in?

This Friday, we’re going after the sacred cows.

We’re going to take every absolute HPS proclamation we can think of — including “never assume the sale” — hold it up to the light, and see if it survives contact with reality. Some will. Some won’t. Some will turn out to be right for the wrong reasons.

Come ready to challenge. Come ready to be challenged.

This Friday’s Community Forum — “Assuming the Sale the HPS Way”
Bring your absolutes. We’ll bring the grill.

The video recording of this conversation is available here for $25 USD.  Transcript and chat are included.

MPPs and Sasquatch – Do They Exist? HPS Forum Conversation on Fri 10 Apr 2026

Let’s talk about something that seems reasonable…
but quietly creates confusion in sales.

What if someone is not clearly a Low Probability Prospect…
and not clearly a High Probability Prospect?

What are they?

  • Medium Probability?
  • Medium-Low?
  • “Somewhere in between”?

After all…
it’s a common belief that the world isn’t binary.

That people can’t be placed into categories like:

  • High Probability
  • Low Probability

Because that would mean we’re judging people.
Treating them like objects.

And High Probability Selling doesn’t do that.

So what actually happens?

In practice…

When we try to measure or define:

  • “medium probability”
  • “kind of interested”
  • “not a no, but not a yes”

We introduce something subtle:

Fog.

Not complexity.
Fog.

And once the fog rolls in:

  • Decision-making slows down
  • Conversations lose clarity
  • CRM pipelines freeze
  • “Interested” starts to look like progress

But nothing actually moves.

Here’s the real question

How do we measure:

  • Inside the sales role?
  • Outside the sales role?
    (marketing, service, fulfillment…)

If we’re trying to align an entire business
with HPS principles?

What we’ll explore in this Forum

  • Why “Medium Probability Prospects” appear to exist
  • Why they don’t actually exist (for measurement)
  • How this confusion shows up in:
    • inbound
    • outbound
    • email / DM
    • CRM pipelines
  • The mindset shift that removes the fog
  • What to do instead — in real conversations

A simple idea… that gets complicated

This is actually simple.

But for all the human effort to simplify things…
we tend to complicate them.

Sometimes so much that:

The simplicity itself becomes hard to see.

Who this is for

  • People using HPS
  • People exploring HPS
  • People trying to align sales with the rest of the business
  • Anyone noticing their pipeline feels… unclear

We talked about this during a Zoom conversation on Friday 10 April 2026. The meeting was well attended.

The meeting was recorded.  The video recording is available for sale on our website for $25 USD. 

What Makes High Probability Selling So Uncomfortable?

What makes (or has made) HPS uncomfortable for you?

When you encountered High Probability Selling — learning about it or trying to apply it — what did you experience?  Did anything make you uncomfortable?  What was that?  Why did it make you feel that way?

We talked about it in a live forum meeting on Zoom.

Topic:  What Makes HPS So Uncomfortable?
Date:  Thursday 26 March 2026
Time:  1:00 PM (USA Eastern Time)
Cost:  Your name and email. No charge to attend.

The meeting was recorded.  The video recording is now available for sale on our website (here) for $25 USD.

The Most Expensive Lie in Sales: Selling the Outcome Without the Get

Most prospects will say they want the outcome.

Better results. More security. Increased revenue.

That’s easy.

What’s not easy — and almost never clarified — is whether they’re willing to do what it takes to produce that outcome.

In High Probability Selling, that’s the Get. What it takes to get the outcome.

And when the Get is unclear or avoided:

  • Prospects say yes too quickly
  • Pipelines fill with non-buyers
  • Deals fall apart late

Not because they didn’t want the result…
but because they were never willing to do the Get.

We took a direct look at that gap in a recent HPS Community Forum meeting.

When:  Thursday 19 March 2026
Format: Live Zoom Forum (discussion-based)
Video Recording: Available here for $25 USD

Open vs. Closed Questions – What They Do to a Conversation

An open question is one that gives the other person the greatest latitude in how they can respond.  It leaves room for choice.  A closed question narrows that latitude and places more control with the person asking the question.  In selling, the difference matters because questions do more than gather information — they shape the emotional and decision-making space of the conversation.

A simple rule is to treat any yes/no question as a closed question, and any question that begins with how, why, what, or when as an open question. That’s ok as a general guideline, but there are very important exceptions.

For instance, “Is that something you want?” sounds like a closed question, but it leaves the other person entirely free.  There is no implied preference, no momentum to maintain, and no penalty for saying no.

“How’s that working for you?” sounds like an open question, but is most commonly used as criticism, pretending to be an invitation to reflect.  While many answers are technically possible, only a few feel safe.  In that way, the question reduces choice even as it appears to expand it.

What matters is not whether a question is technically open or closed, but where control resides.  Some questions give control to the other person.  Others quietly pull it back to the person asking.

So why does that happen?  Why do we sometimes try to narrow the other person’s choices, even when we know that pressure creates resistance and makes conversations feel unsafe?  In many cases, it has more to do with habit than with intent.

Restrictive questions often feel efficient.  They can seem like a way to move the conversation along or arrive at an answer more quickly.  The cost is that they also reduce the other person’s freedom to respond — sometimes without our realizing it.  We may also end up getting answers to the wrong questions, while a more open question could have led to something deeper and more useful.

Once you begin to notice what questions do to a conversation, you start hearing them differently — including your own.  The distinction becomes less about choosing the right kind of question and more about noticing where control is showing up.  Over time, that awareness changes the conversation on its own.  Questions begin to open because there is less need to manage the answer.  And the conversation becomes a place where clearer, more useful answers can emerge — naturally, and without force.

We explored this subject more deeply Thursday 22 January 2026 in a live and interactive conversation on Zoom.  The video recording of that conversation is available here ($25 USD).

What do I do when unexpected events screw up my well planned HPS sales process? – Forum Discussion 8 Jan 2026

Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963, was once asked the question, “Considering all of your experience and preparation, what is most likely to blow a government off course?”

His famous reply was, “Events, my good man, events.”  Or as Frederick the Great 18th century soldier’s warning, “All is for naught if an angel pisses on your flintlock.”

No matter what you are selling, products, services, software, advice or ideas, sales is a people business. People, language, and perspective often matter more than product or service or price.

And people have a tendency to move in unpredictable ways and say unpredictable things, often at very unexpected moments.

HPS has been, since the writing of the book, first considered to be a linear process that will produce high probability sales.  And most of the time, with the right implementation and mindset, HPS works reliably well.

However, as a process alone, as our wise old Prime Minister says above, sometimes, sometimes seemingly often, “events, my good man, events” or unpredictable external events occur and we get ourselves lost as to what to do or where to go next.

The next HPS Community Forum will discuss common ways that our best laid HPS intentions can go awry, our prospects can go in completely unexpected directions.

AND, we will provide strategies and ideas on how to get your sales process back on track, both from a one-on-one sales situation, as well as a holistic perspective on the business in which sales take place.

It is essential that one’s own HPS Principles, Values, Standards, and experience are considered in the sales recovery process and we will cover those as well.

High Probability Selling Community Forum Discussion

Live and Interactive Video Discussion on Zoom,
led by Paul Bunn and Carl Ingalls

Thursday 8 January 2026
9:30 AM (USA Eastern Time)
Supported by Voluntary Donation

If you want to attend this Live Forum event, please register here. 

If you want the recording for this Forum event, please wait until the following day (Fri 9 Jan) and then order the recording from the HPS Online Store.