The Real Reason You Aren't Closing Sales

Sales.

Every moment, you’re either selling — or being sold to. Whether you’re paid to sell, or your simply trying to convince your kids to eat their vegetables, it’s sales all the way down.

I love sales. Not the cartoon version of sales with pressure tactics and manipulation, but instead, consultative sales, something fundamentally different than what most of the world, including Hollywood (think Wolf of Wallstreet), is used to. It’s not about convincing someone that you have the solution they should buy. Instead, it’s about adding value by being someone who helps your client out of a stuck place by providing them with real insights and perspectives they don’t already have.

Sometimes, it also means telling them not what they want to hear, but instead, what they need to hear. That feature you think is so great? Oh, that won’t actually do what you need. The most premium tier has your interest? It’s actually overkill for your problem. And what’s so much fun for me with consultative sales — you get to solve the problem by challenging your customer.

The funny thing is, I’ve been selling this way as a founder for over a decade, and selling vegetable options to my kids for about that same amount of time, but it was only a few months ago that the work of Matt Dixon caught my attention.

He’s co-authored multiple best-sellers, most famously The Challenger Sale way back in 2011. He’s been building on that work ever since, culminating in an incredible piece of research where he and his colleagues used AI to analyze 2.5 million sales calls to figure out what works, instead of relying on vague tribal sales strategies. We cover these winning strategies, how to use them, and even a few other surprising data points that were revealed by Matt’s research in the episode.

Beyond the sales tactics that I highly recommend you employ in your own life, this conversation is also a masterclass in how sales can be an embodiment of some of your deepest held values.

Why? Because to sell as a Challenger, it takes the courage to lose a sale, if it means a better outcome for your customer. But, developing that courage isn’t something you can pick up at a half-day sales training workshop, instead, it’s an outcome of the deeply personal work that we’re exploring here on Good Authority.

Jonathan

P.S. If you ever find yourself stuck battling between founder and manager mode, I posted a short video over on LinkedIn that helps to settle the debate.

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