Here's something I learned the hard way, from both sides of the counter: nobody buys what you're selling. They buy their way out of a problem that's been bugging them. And they only buy it from somebody they trust.
You've probably heard the old line that people don't want a drill, they want a hole. (A Harvard marketing professor named Theodore Levitt usually gets the credit for that one.) I'd go a step further. Nobody wants the hole either. They want the shelf up before the in-laws show up on Saturday.
That's pretty much my whole philosophy of sales. Find out what their Saturday is.
Why most pitches miss
Most of the time, the problem you're selling isn't the problem they feel. You walk into a shop and see "inefficient scheduling." The owner sees a no-show text at 6 a.m. and another Saturday stuck behind the register.
Same problem, sure. But only one version of it ever gets money spent on it.
I've owned a dozen businesses, so I've been pitched a lot. Most vendors lost me inside of two minutes. It usually wasn't a bad product. They were just answering a question I hadn't asked. The few who got my money asked me better questions than I'd been asking myself.
Zig Ziglar said it better than I can:
"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want."Zig Ziglar
Notice he said what they want. Not what you think they should want.
When a pitch falls flat, it's almost always one of three things. You're using your words instead of theirs, and nobody says "workflow automation" at 9 p.m. while they're still doing the books. Or you found a problem they have but don't really care about, and every business has about fifty of those. Or you showed up with the answer before you understood the question. If a doctor handed you a prescription before you sat down, you wouldn't call that confidence.
Do your homework first
Here's a number that should change how you prep. Gartner surveyed 750 B2B buyers and found they spend only about 17% of their buying time actually meeting with suppliers. If three of you are competing, you get maybe 5% each. Spend that sliver asking "so, tell me about your business" and you've burned it.
Jim Rohn used to say:
"Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune."Jim Rohn
In sales, the self-education happens before you ever pick up the phone. I like to show up with a hunch I can back up.
I start with their reviews. Google and Yelp are free consulting. If three people mention waiting forever, I already know where the conversation's headed. I look at their job postings too, because those are basically confessions. A front-desk job that's been posted three times this year isn't a hiring problem, it's a turnover problem.
Then I try to be their customer. I call, I fill out the contact form, I try to book something, and I see how long it takes them to get back to me. You'd be amazed how many owners have never done that with their own business.
I also think about the calendar. A café in January and a café in July have completely different headaches.
Out of all that, I write down one guess. Something like, "I bet you're losing weekend catering requests because nobody picks up after 2." It has to be specific enough that it could be wrong. Then I hold it loosely, because the owner knows plenty that Google doesn't.
My test is simple. If what you dug up doesn't change the first question you ask, you didn't do research. You just browsed.
Get them talking about a real day
Stephen Covey boiled it down to five words: "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." Discovery shouldn't feel like an interview. They should be doing most of the talking, and you should be writing like you're paid by the word.
I don't ask people what their problems are. I ask them to walk me through last Saturday. You get stories that way, and stories are a lot more honest than opinions. When something comes up, I ask what it costs them. How many hours a week? What did they have to skip because of it? I want their number, not mine. Then I ask what happens if it's still like this six months from now. If they shrug, there's no urgency, and honestly, that's fine. I'd rather know now than three meetings from now.
Ed Mylett has a line I think about a lot:
"People respond to what they feel, not what they hear and see."Ed Mylett
So pay attention to how people say things, not just what they say. When an owner leans in, or cusses a little, or starts a sentence with "honestly," you've hit it. When they say "eh, it's fine," it probably isn't fine. But they're not going to pay to fix it either.
Before I leave, I say it back to them in their own words. "So the real problem is you can't take a day off without the place falling apart." If they say "exactly," we're there. If they correct me, that's even better, because now I actually know.
Then earn the right to fix it
Ziglar again, because he nailed this one too:
"Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust."Zig Ziglar
Good discovery takes care of the first four. The last one is on you, and it takes longer.
Start by showing you listened. Your proposal should sound like them. If you could swap in another company's name and send it as-is, it's a brochure.
Keep the first step small. Nobody gets married on the first date. Give them something fixed-price with clear edges, so they're not risking much and you get a chance to prove yourself.
Be upfront about what you won't do. "That's not really my thing, but here's who I'd call" will earn you more credibility than a page of testimonials. Same goes for risks. Most owners have been promised the moon before, and they remember the guy who promised it. Tell them what could go sideways and what you'd do about it.
Agree on what success looks like in plain English, like "you're off the floor two mornings a week by the end of month two." Nobody ever got excited about "improved efficiency."
And be willing to walk away. If it's not a fit, tell them. In a small town, the deal you talk somebody out of does more for your reputation than the one you close.
Trust isn't a closing technique. It's just what happens when you stop giving people reasons to say no.
So here's where I land
Dale Carnegie wrote that you'll make more friends in two months by being interested in other people than in two years of trying to get them interested in you. I think that's the best sales advice ever written, and it's not even about sales.
Selling is mostly diagnosis with a handshake at the end. Do your homework, find their Saturday, fix one thing really well, and let that do the talking for you.
It's how we run every Freedom Blueprint at FieldKit. We look before we prescribe, and if the fix isn't us, we'll tell you who it is.
Business consulting. Practical progress.
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