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In this episode of The Art and Science of Complex Sales, Paul Fuller sits down with Eric Larocque, founder of Cultivate Winning, to unpack what truly drives sustainable sales performance. From early lessons in his father’s butcher shop to scaling a revenue team from 9 million to 27 million, Eric explains why preparation, resilience, and culture consistently outperform raw talent.
Together, they explore how early setbacks shape grit, why team culture changes everything, and how leaders can build a repeatable hiring model that prioritizes willpower over experience.
Eric shares how working in his father’s butcher shop taught him pattern recognition and value creation long before he entered professional sales. His competitive hockey career, cut short by multiple knee injuries, instilled resilience and discipline that later defined his approach to selling. Those early experiences shaped his belief that success is less about natural talent and more about preparation and refusing to quit.
After stepping into a sales coaching and later sales leadership role, Eric rebuilt structure inside a growing organization. He split overlapping roles, implemented Salesforce and SalesLoft, introduced consistent coaching frameworks, and focused heavily on self-development. The result was measurable: revenue grew from 9 million to 27 million and conversion rates more than doubled. His core takeaway is clear. Performance problems are rarely people problems. They are usually system and leadership problems.
Eric challenges traditional hiring assumptions by explaining why he prefers servers, athletes, and construction workers over experienced sales candidates. Drawing from Angela Duckworth’s research on grit, he built a practical hiring model that measures resilience, curiosity, integrity, and drive. Skills can be trained. Work ethic and persistence cannot. By benchmarking top performers and hiring for grit, he dramatically reduced turnover and increased predictability.
Listen to the full conversation with Eric Larocque to learn how resilient leadership, strong systems, and intentional hiring create high-performing, people-first sales organizations.
Paul Fuller’s stated mission is to help others maximize their gifts by using his.
Paul has been a pioneer in the sales process and training, sales as a service, content marketing and CRM. As a previous founder and owner of multiple successful growth organizations in these spaces, Paul has effectively trained and led sales and marketing teams across the world to focus on and achieve dynamic growth.
He firmly believes sales is defined best in three categories:
• Service - helping other get what they need
• Leadership - guiding others toward their vision
• Wayfinding - navigating the path to success together
He is firmly committed to elevating the sales profession through coaching, leading, and empowering others through systems that enable strong performance.
Currently Paul leads revenue growth at Membrain.com - the top sales effectiveness CRM in the world. Working with his team, and a group of over 100 top sales consultant organizations across the globe, they are focused at creating scalable growth through sales excellence in companies and teams in over 80 countries.
Schedule a call with him here.
Find out more about Paul Fuller on LinkedIn
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