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Belief Doesn’t Close Sales. Evidence Does.

Sales Blog, The Navigator News

There’s a school of sales thought that’s been around for as long as I’ve been in this business, and it goes something like this: to succeed in sales, you have to believe. Believe in your company. Believe in your product. Believe in yourself. Get your own conviction right, the thinking goes, and the sales will follow.

I read a piece recently from one of the old lions of the sales world making exactly this argument, complete with a self-test to measure your belief and a couple of moving stories about salespeople who found their conviction and watched their numbers take off. And I’ll be honest with you – it’s not entirely wrong. Belief matters. But the way these gurus tell you to get it, and what they think it does, is backwards. And that backwardness is costing salespeople real money.

The Problem With “Just Believe”

Here’s the first thing that jumped out at me. In the old-school version, a sale requires three beliefs, and every one of them is about the salesperson. Believe in your company, your product, yourself. Notice who’s completely missing from that list?

The customer.

This is the fundamental flaw in a whole generation of sales teaching. It treats the sale as a function of the salesperson’s internal state – as if you could psych yourself up in the mirror before your morning calls, walk in radiating conviction, and close on the strength of your own certainty.  That’s the “rah-rah” football coach approach. It’s the salesperson’s belief doing the work, not the customer’s need.

But sales isn’t something you do to the customer through the force of your own conviction. It’s something you do with the customer, by understanding their world well enough to help them make a good decision. The most believing salesperson in the world, convinced to his bones that he’s selling the greatest product on earth, will still lose if the buyer doesn’t need that product, or needs it configured differently, or resents the way he’s being sold. Belief doesn’t change any of that. Investigation does.

Where Belief Actually Comes From

The stories these old-school pieces tell usually give the game away, if you read them closely. One of them described a salesperson who’d been doing okay but not great, until a customer thanked him for a birthday card and told him it was the only one she’d received. Something shifted for him after that, and within six months his sales had doubled. The author’s explanation? “For some unknown reason.”

Unknown reason. That phrase is the whole problem.

There’s nothing unknown about it. That salesperson saw, with his own eyes, that something he did had a real impact on a real person. He didn’t manufacture belief by staring into a mirror and repeating affirmations. He earned it by witnessing evidence – proof that his work mattered to the people he served. And once he had that evidence, his behavior changed, his customers felt the difference, and the results followed.

That’s the pattern in every one of these conversion stories, if you look. The insurance agent who finally believed in his product believed because he watched a policy he’d sold pay off a widow’s mortgage and put her kids through college. That’s not belief pulled from thin air; it’s belief built on evidence.

And that’s the thing the gurus have exactly reversed. They tell you belief comes first and produces results. In reality, doing the work right comes first, the evidence follows, and the belief is a byproduct. You don’t believe your way into good selling. You sell the right way, you watch it work, and belief is what you’re left holding.

Why This Distinction Matters

This isn’t just a philosophical quibble. The direction of causation changes everything about what you actually do on Monday morning.

If you think belief comes first, you spend your energy on your own psychology – pep talks, affirmations, motivational videos, working yourself into a state of conviction before you dial. And when the sales don’t come, the only conclusion available to you is that you didn’t believe hard enough. So you double down on the psychology, which does nothing, because the problem was never your belief.

If you understand that evidence comes first, you spend your energy on the customer instead. You investigate. You ask better questions. You define success in the customer’s terms and then actually deliver it. And when you watch your solution do something real for someone – solve the problem, save the money, remove the headache – the belief takes care of itself. You don’t have to work at it. It’s simply the natural response to seeing your work matter.

One of these paths is a hamster wheel. The other compounds.

The Danger of Belief Without Evidence

There’s a darker side to “just believe” that the motivational crowd never mentions. Belief that isn’t grounded in evidence doesn’t just fail to help – it can actively hurt.

A salesperson with total, unshakeable belief in his product, untethered from any real understanding of the customer, becomes the guy who’s convinced he knows what’s best for you. He’s not investigating, because he already knows the answer. He’s not listening, because he’s too busy being certain. His belief has curdled into the exact opposite of curiosity, and curiosity is the single most important skill a salesperson has.

That’s the salesperson who tells you what you need before he’s asked you a single real question about your situation. We’ve all been on the receiving end of him, and none of us bought from him twice. His conviction, the very thing the gurus told him to cultivate, is what makes him unbearable to deal with.

Real belief – the kind built on evidence – has humility baked into it, because it was earned by paying attention to customers rather than by ignoring them. It makes you a better listener, not a worse one, because you learned it by listening in the first place.

What to Do Instead

So if you’re not going to psych yourself up in the mirror, what do you actually do?

Do the work that generates evidence. Investigate your customers thoroughly enough to understand what success genuinely looks like for them. Sell in a way you’d be comfortable explaining to their face and yours – no manipulation, no pressure, nothing you’d have to hide. Then pay attention to what happens. Watch your solution work. Collect the evidence.

Follow up with the customers you’ve sold, not to squeeze them for the next order, but to see how it actually turned out. That feedback loop is where belief comes from, and it’s also where you get better, because you learn what worked and what didn’t from the only people whose opinion counts.

And when you have a genuine win – when a customer tells you that what you sold them made a real difference – don’t file it away and forget it. That’s your evidence. That’s the raw material of the only kind of belief that’s worth anything, the kind you didn’t have to manufacture because you earned it.

The old lions aren’t entirely wrong that belief matters. They’re just wrong about where it comes from and what it does. Belief doesn’t close sales. The work closes sales, and belief is what you’re left with after you’ve watched the work pay off – for the customer first, and then for you.

Get the order right, and everything else follows.

It’s 2026 – Do You Know Where Your Buyers Are?

Sales Blog, The Navigator News

There used to be a public service announcement that ran on television late at night: “It’s 10 PM – do you know where your children are?” The idea was simple, which was that a lot of parents assumed they knew, and a lot of them were wrong. I think about that ad a lot when I coach sales leaders today, because most of them assume they know where their buyers are and how they buy, and most of them are working from a map that’s twenty years out of date.

In the Navigator’s Chart, I call this the Waters – the market environment you’re sailing through, the conditions that determine whether your journey is smooth or whether you run aground. And here’s the problem: the Waters have changed more in the last five years than in the previous hundred, but most sales approaches haven’t changed at all.

How Buyers Used to Buy

Not that long ago, the salesperson held most of the cards. If a buyer wanted to understand a product, compare options, or figure out what something should cost, the most efficient path to that information was through a salesperson. We controlled the brochures, the specs, the pricing, and the answers, and that information imbalance was the foundation of how selling worked.  Gotta be honest, it was a pretty cool time if you were a salesperson (I was).

A buyer would identify a need, call a few vendors, and rely on the salespeople to educate them. The salesperson who got in early could shape the entire process, because the buyer didn’t have an easy way to learn without us. Cold calling worked because picking up the phone was often the buyer’s best option too, and contact ratios reflected that – you could expect a conversation for every three or four dials, and a voicemail had a decent chance of getting returned.

That world is gone, and it isn’t coming back.

How Buyers Buy Now

Today’s buyer completes somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of their Buyer’s Journey before they ever talk to a salesperson, and in many cases they’ve already settled on a preferred vendor before that first conversation. They research online, read reviews, watch videos, ask their peers in online communities, and use AI tools to compare options and synthesize information that used to live only in a salesperson’s head. The information imbalance that built the old sales model hasn’t just shrunk – it’s reversed, and now the buyer often walks in knowing more about your market than your newest rep does.

If you think I’m wrong, ask yourself how you conducted your last major purchase.  Did you do research beforehand, or did you bring in a salesperson and rely on the salesperson (or salespeople) to give you their gospel?

Phone work has a similar problem. Contact ratios that used to run one in three or four have dropped to one in ten or worse, and voicemails mostly go to die. That doesn’t mean prospecting is dead, but it means the old approach of dialing for dollars and pitching whoever answers is a slow way to fail.  Phone work still can be useful, but it requires a different mindset than in the past – and it’s not a direct way to appointments anymore.

A Generational Shift Drives This

None of this is an accident, and it’s only going to accelerate, because the people doing the buying have changed. Millennials and Gen Z now make up roughly 71 percent of B2B buyers, and they bring a fundamentally different set of expectations to the table.

These buyers grew up in the age of Amazon, where pricing is visible, information is instant, and you don’t have to talk to anyone to figure out what you need. They expect that same experience in their professional buying, which is why they’re the least tolerant generation we’ve ever seen toward the “contact us for pricing” runaround. They also dislike negotiating – Millennials don’t care for it, and Gen Z has almost no interest in it at all – so the old gamesmanship of holding cards close and dancing around price doesn’t impress them. It annoys them.

There’s a wild card, too.  If this behavior were only confined within Millennials and Z’s (these two generations make up 71% of those with B2B buying authority), we could at least figure out how old our buyer is, and have a “Boomer and X” approach and a “Millennial and Z” approach.  But many of the X’s and even Boomers have looked at the buying habits of younger buyers and said, “You know, that’s not a bad idea!”  So now, it’s a mixed bag where some Boomers and X’s are buying like Millennials and Z’s.

That doesn’t mean that salespeople still aren’t valuable.  They are – perhaps even more than in the past.  Research shows that while many buyers say they want a rep-free experience, the ones who buy that way more often end up regretting the decision. They want the efficiency and the transparency, but they still need genuine guidance, and that’s the opening for salespeople who understand the new Waters. The opportunity isn’t to fight the way buyers want to buy – it’s to meet them where they actually are, with transparency and expertise instead of control and pressure.

There’s a Real Opportunity Here – If You Want It

If your sales approach still assumes that buyers need you to access basic information, that cold calling at volume (without incorporating other methods) will fill your pipeline, or that you can control the process by controlling what the buyer knows, you’re navigating today’s Waters with yesterday’s chart. The salespeople who win now are the ones who show up after the buyer has done their homework and add value the internet couldn’t – real insight, sharp questions, and help defining what success actually looks like.  And yes, there’s still a role for building buyer relationships before they haven’t entered their Buyer’s Journey – what Harvey Mackay used to call “Digging Your Well Before You’re Thirsty” – which makes you the go-to for those insights.

You can’t change the Waters, but you absolutely can learn to read them. The buyers are out there, they’re just not where they used to be, and they’re not behaving the way your old playbook says they should.

Navigating the New Waters

I’m going on June 25 with a webinar dedicated entirely to the Waters – how buyers have changed, where they actually are in 2026, and how to adjust your approach to meet them there. If this article struck a nerve, that session will give you the full picture and a practical way to chart your course. Details and registration are here.

For now, start with one honest question about your own sales organization: It’s 2026 – do you really know where your buyers are? Because if you’re being honest, there’s a good chance they’ve moved, and the first step to reaching them is admitting that the map you’ve been using needs to be redrawn.

Your Customer May Not Know What Success Looks Like – And That’s Your Job to Fix

Sales Blog, The Navigator News,

I spend a lot of time talking about how the most important thing in a sale is to define “success” in your customer’s terms, but it occurs to me that I’ve never gone into much detail on exactly how to do that. We’re going to fix that today.

This is one of the most important steps in selling – and it’s also one that’s skipped often. Before you can solve a customer’s problem, the customer has to know what solving it actually looks like – and much of the time, they don’t. They might not even know what’s possible. They have a vague sense that something is wrong, or that something could be better, but they haven’t defined what “better” means in any concrete way. If you help them define it, you’ve done something most of your competitors never will, and you’ve done it during the part of the Buyer’s Journey where the sale is actually won or lost.

Why Customers Show Up Without a Definition of Success

When a customer enters the Investigation phase of their Buyer’s Journey, they’re trying to figure out what they need, but they usually haven’t thought it through as clearly as you’d assume. They know they’re dissatisfied and they want a change, but they often haven’t considered what a successful outcome would actually look and feel like once they have it.  You can help them envision it.

I see this constantly. A customer says they want to “improve efficiency” or “reduce costs” or “get better service,” but those are headlines, not definitions. If you ask three different people inside the same company what “better service” means, you’ll get three different answers, and none of them will be specific enough to act on. If you take that headline at face value and run straight to a solution, you’ll find out at the worst possible moment that you solved the wrong problem.

That’s why helping a customer define success isn’t preparation for the sale – it’s the most important part of the sale. Remember that 80% of your chance to win or lose is determined by the time you ask your last question, and a huge chunk of that 80% lives right here.

The Five Things You Need to Know

Helping a customer define success means getting concrete answers to five questions, and the deeper you go, the more powerful your position becomes.

First, what do they absolutely want to avoid? What should never happen? Customers are often clearer about their fears than their hopes, and knowing what would constitute a disaster for them tells you where the landmines are buried. If you trip one of these later, the deal is dead no matter how good the rest of your solution is.

Second, what do they absolutely want to have happen? These are the non-negotiables, the outcomes that have to be there for the customer to consider the purchase a success. Don’t accept headlines here – drill down until you know exactly what the outcome looks like on a specific day, in specific terms the customer describes themselves.

Third, what are the nice-to-haves? These are the bonuses, the things that would be great but aren’t dealbreakers, and knowing the difference between a must-have and a nice-to-have keeps you from over-engineering a solution around something the customer doesn’t actually care that much about.

Fourth – and this is the one almost nobody asks – if you’re talking to anyone other than the top person, how are they rewarded personally if your solution succeeds? The president or CEO cares about the company’s outcome, but the manager or director you’re often dealing with has a personal stake too. Maybe success here gets them a promotion, or a bonus, or simply the relief of not getting chewed out anymore. It takes a lot of trust for a customer to share this with you, and you won’t get it early in the relationship, but if you earn it, it’s the most powerful motivator of all. People buy for company reasons, but they decide for personal ones.

Fifth, if there are multiple stakeholders in the decision, you’d better know every one of their definitions. The CFO’s definition of success isn’t the operations manager’s definition, which isn’t the end user’s definition, and a solution that nails one while ignoring the others will get killed by the person you didn’t bother to understand. Map the stakeholders, and then map what success means to each of them individually.

While you’re doing this, you need to set the timeframe correctly.  Even when salespeople do define success in the customers’ terms, they often think only of immediate success; i.e. how the customer evaluates the solution immediately after delivery or implementation.  Often, it’s more useful to ask the customer how they’ll evaluate the success a year or more down the road, after the ‘glow’ of the startup has long since passed.

This Isn’t Manipulation

I want to be clear about something, because helping shape a customer’s definition of success can sound like you’re steering them toward what you sell. You’re not tricking them into wanting your solution – you’re helping them think through dimensions of the problem they hadn’t considered, and some of those dimensions happen to be ones where you’re strong.

The customer comes out of the conversation with a clearer, more complete picture of what they need, and you come out of it positioned as the person who helped them see it. That’s not a trick, that’s value, and it’s the kind of value that customers remember when it’s time to decide.  You’re also highlighting urgency that already exists, rather than trying to ‘create urgency’ after you have proposed and you’re desperate for a deal.

Remember – sales isn’t something we do to the customer, it’s something we do with the customer.

This Beats the “Solution Barf”

A customer who hasn’t defined success can’t properly evaluate any solution, including yours, because they have no standard to measure it against. You can have the best offering in the market, but if the customer doesn’t have a clear definition of what they’re trying to achieve, your superiority is invisible to them.

When you help the customer define success first, you give them the measuring stick they’ll use to evaluate every option – including your competitors. If you’ve done the work of helping them think through what really matters, that measuring stick will tend to favor the things you do well, because you helped build it. The salesperson who races to the solution is asking the customer to judge a contest where nobody agreed on the rules.

This is also why so many deals stall in the Evaluation phase. The customer can’t decide because they were never clear on what they wanted, so every option looks like a coin flip – and a coin flip is a decision most people would rather postpone. If you helped them define success up front, the Evaluation phase gets dramatically easier, because they already know what they’re looking for.

Navigating the Definition of Success

The next time a customer tells you what they want, resist the urge to start solving it. Slow down and help them define what success actually looks like first, because that definition is worth more to them – and to you – than any solution you could lead with.

Work through the five questions. Find out what they need to avoid, what they need to achieve, what would be a nice bonus, how the people in the room are rewarded personally, and what success means to every stakeholder in the decision. Be genuinely curious about their world, because that curiosity is what separates you from everyone else who just wants to pitch. Do that, and you won’t just sell them something – you’ll help them understand their own situation more clearly than they did before you showed up.

For greater understanding of your buyers:

Make sure you attend my June 25, 2026 Webinar, “It’s Not Your Pipeline: Where Buyers Live and How They Actually Buy,” at 11 AM Central.  See the description and register here.

What 21 Days on LinkedIn Taught Me About the Platform’s Future

Sales Blog, The Navigator News, Uncategorized,

I just saw a LinkedIn post by a contact of mine named Stephen Hopper, and he said it better than I could have: “I miss business posts on LinkedIn. Now most posts are about politics, silly games, tabloid trash, and time wasters.” He’s right. And he’s not alone in noticing it.

Over the past three weeks, I’ve been running a deliberate test on LinkedIn – posting daily, tracking metrics, analyzing what the algorithm rewards and what it punishes. The data I’ve collected concerns me, and might concern you if you need LinkedIn to remain a professional platform. It’s a story about a company that claims to value authenticity while monetizing optimization, that says it wants business content while crushing it, and that may be approaching its own “jump the shark” moment.

I Tested To See What Actually Works on LinkedIn in 2026

I started with a simple hypothesis. Last year, I was crushing it on LinkedIn.  Then, I took a  two-week holiday break over Christmas and New Year’s, and I found out that I had tanked my algorithmic reach from the 20K-50K range down to 22-280 impressions per post. I figured 21 consecutive days of posting would reset the algorithmic trust. What I actually got was data about how fundamentally broken LinkedIn’s incentive structure has become.

Here’s what worked for me: Screenshot callouts. That’s it.

A screenshot callout is straightforward – you take a screenshot of something someone else posted on LinkedIn, share that image in your own post, and then comment on it. You’re calling attention to something someone said (good or bad), using their words and the visual proof to make a point or spark conversation.  If you’re wondering why I didn’t just share the post and add my commentary, it’s because it’s a known fact that sharing and commenting gets throttled badly by the algorithm.  Screenshotting doesn’t.  No, I can’t explain that.

Two posts of mine used this approach. One was a screenshot of Tony Robbins promoting what looked like AI-generated content – I called out the low-quality thinking behind it. Another was a screenshot of a salesperson’s complaint about buyers who don’t want to be called, and I used that to discuss what modern buyers actually prefer. Those two posts generated 33,000 and 38,000 impressions respectively in the first 48 hours. They sparked genuine conversation. People debated, shared perspectives, and added their own examples. The comments were substantive. These posts are still generating engagement weeks later.

Every other format I tried – personal stories, teaching content, business insights, and authentic reflections – bottomed out at 75 to 300 impressions. Even the well-written stuff and the posts that got consistent comments and reactions. The algorithm looked at them and said “no, thanks.”

A post about Kyle Busch’s death and what it teaches us about mortality and work-life balance got crushed with 191 impressions in 24 hours. And there isn’t much more “authentic” than me talking about racing.

A post about losing four hours to a SaaS vendor’s broken support system, connected to real lessons about stress-testing your organization? 271 impressions total. Also dead.

But a screenshot of someone complaining about something controversial? 30,000+ impressions. That’s the trade LinkedIn is making, and it’s not subtle.

LinkedIn’s Core Problem is That It’s Designed for One Thing, Optimized for Another

LinkedIn was built as a professional network. The original mission was to connect with colleagues, share your career journey, find opportunities, and promote your business and expertise.

But LinkedIn’s business model doesn’t actually reward professional content. It rewards engagement. Comments. Reactions. Shares. Time on platform. What drives those metrics now isn’t business advice, or career insights, or the kind of thoughtful, substantive content that actually helps professionals do their jobs better.

What drives engagement is controversy, politics, viral moments, and whatever gets people emotionally activated. The algorithm doesn’t discriminate between a genuine business conversation and a heated political debate – it just sees engagement metrics going up. So it amplifies the debate.

The result is that business posts – the very thing LinkedIn was built for – now get algorithmically punished. Stephen Hopper is lamenting a platform that no longer feels like a professional space because the algorithm actively discourages professional content in favor of engagement-driving noise. It’s not that professionals stopped posting business content. It’s that LinkedIn’s algorithm stopped promoting it.

This isn’t sour grapes.  I still have content that does very well on LinkedIn, and I know how to create content that would work even better.  It’s just a statement of reality that the content that would do the best, and the content that actually moves the professional needle, are two different things. This is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of LinkedIn in 2026.

Let’s Talk Video: LinkedIn Promotes What It Crushes

Here’s where it gets even more absurd. LinkedIn runs paid ads across the platform promoting the value of video content. They have entire training programs about incorporating video into your posts. The message from their marketing team is clear: video is the future on LinkedIn.

And their algorithm crushes it.

During my test, every video I posted – including a 12-minute Navigator’s Log segment that took real time and effort to produce – got severely throttled. We’re talking 56 to 75 impressions. Meanwhile, a screenshot of text got 30,000.

This isn’t accidental; LinkedIn knows exactly what they’re doing. They want creators to invest time in video production because it’s a sunk cost. You spent the time, you’re emotionally invested in the post, you’re more likely to promote it, pay to boost it, or upgrade to a premium feature to get it in front of people. But the algorithm isn’t actually going to give you organic reach for video content.

It’s a bait and switch. Create the content they promote, then pay them to distribute it.

The “Strengthen Post” Tool and What It Says About LinkedIn’s Direction

This is where my concern moves from observation into genuine worry about what’s coming.

LinkedIn just launched a “Strengthen Post” feature for $29.99 a month. It promises to sharpen your posts and get you up to 30% more engagement. On the surface, it sounds like a helpful tool. But the implications are significant.

LinkedIn is simultaneously saying two contradictory things. First: “Our algorithm rewards authenticity and genuine engagement – stop posting AI content.” Second: “Pay us $30 a month to optimize your posts for our algorithm using our AI tool.”

These statements cannot both be true. If the algorithm genuinely rewards authenticity, you shouldn’t need an optimization tool. If you need an optimization tool to get reach, then the algorithm doesn’t reward authenticity – it rewards optimization.

There’s a conflict of interest here that goes beyond just the contradiction. If LinkedIn’s algorithm starts preferring posts created with their AI tool, we’ve crossed into “pay to play” territory. You don’t have to explicitly punish non-strengthened content – you just have to subtly prefer the strengthened content. Users won’t notice the difference. They’ll just notice their reach going down unless they upgrade.

The company is positioning itself as both the platform and the optimization tool. They write the rules of the algorithm, then sell you the tool to game their own rules. That’s a business model that can’t be justified as serving the user’s interests. It can only be justified as serving LinkedIn’s interests.

Is LinkedIn Jumping the Shark?

There’s a concept called “jumping the shark” – the moment when a platform or product makes a decision that fundamentally breaks what made it valuable in the first place. It’s usually not one decision, but a series of incremental choices that eventually reach a tipping point where users wake up and realize they’re no longer on the platform they thought they were.

LinkedIn feels close to that moment.

The platform started as a place for professionals to build their reputation and find opportunities. It evolved into a content platform where thought leaders could share insights and build audiences. That shift required some compromise of the original mission, but you could still find genuinely valuable professional content if you looked for it.

Now, the feed is dominated by politics, personal drama, viral challenges, and clickbait. The algorithm actively suppresses business content. The company is monetizing “authenticity” through optimization tools. Professional content gets throttled, while screenshot callouts of controversy get amplified.

At what point do professionals stop coming to LinkedIn because the noise-to-signal ratio has become unbearable? At what point do they decide that the platform no longer serves their professional development because it’s been optimized entirely for engagement metrics?

That point might not be here yet, and I hope it doesn’t come.

What Actually Happened: The Real Results

Before we talk about what LinkedIn’s algorithm is doing wrong, let’s be honest about what actually worked during these three weeks. I gained over 50 followers. I added 30 newsletter subscribers. The two screenshot callout posts are still generating engagement weeks later. People are saving those posts, coming back to them, sharing them with others.

That’s real value. It’s not 100,000 followers or going viral. But it’s consistent growth from a professional audience that’s actually interested in what I have to say. That compounds over time. That builds credibility with my target audience.

The point isn’t that LinkedIn is completely broken. The point is that it’s broken in specific ways that make it harder for professionals to build authentic presence, and easier for the algorithm to reward whatever generates the most engagement, regardless of whether that engagement is meaningful.

What This Means for Salespeople, Managers, and Business Owners

Here’s what actually worked during my test, and what it teaches us about using LinkedIn effectively in 2026:

Screenshot callouts work. If you want algorithmic reach on LinkedIn, this is your best bet. Find something in your industry that needs calling out – bad advice, misguided sales approaches, leadership decisions that don’t make sense, claims that don’t hold up. Screenshot it, comment on it thoughtfully, and let the debate happen in the comments. This is the format that breaks through the noise.

 

Direct outreach works better than organic posts. I spent time on LinkedIn using Sales Navigator to target specific prospects and have conversations. I should point out that much of that outreach began with me commenting on their content – that builds visibility and initiates a relationship. That generated real business. The posts I made organically got throttled, but the direct conversations didn’t. If you’re a salesperson or business owner trying to build your pipeline, don’t expect LinkedIn posts to do the heavy lifting. Use the platform for targeted outreach – connecting with decision-makers, engaging in their conversations, building relationships one person at a time.

 

Build visibility while you build your platform. Post 2-3 times a week on topics you actually care about. Don’t chase the algorithm – write about what matters to you and your industry. During my test, I gained 50+ followers and 30 newsletter subscribers just by showing up consistently with authentic content, even when individual posts didn’t go viral. That’s not nothing. Over a year, that compounds.

 

Use LinkedIn to complement other activities, not replace them. If you’re speaking at industry events, your LinkedIn visibility helps. If you’re generating referrals, LinkedIn gives you credibility when prospects look you up. If you’re building partnerships, LinkedIn helps maintain those relationships. But LinkedIn alone won’t build your business. It’s the amplifier, not the engine.

 

Don’t fall for the optimization trap. LinkedIn’s new “Strengthen Post” feature is tempting. So are third-party tools that promise more engagement. The reality is that when you start optimizing for the algorithm, you start sounding like everyone else. The posts that performed best for me were the ones that reflected my actual thinking, not optimized thinking. Your authenticity is your competitive advantage. Protect it.

 

The Bottom Line

Stephen Hopper is right to miss the old LinkedIn. So am I. The platform has drifted so far from its original mission that it barely resembles what it was designed to be.

LinkedIn’s challenge in 2026 isn’t finding the algorithm that works. It’s deciding what platform it actually wants to be. A professional network? A content platform? A paid optimization service? A social media competitor to Facebook? Because right now, it’s trying to be all of them simultaneously – and the result is a platform that serves none of them particularly well.

The data from my 21-day test tells me that LinkedIn’s current trajectory is unsustainable. You can’t build a professional platform on engagement metrics. You can’t claim to reward authenticity while monetizing optimization. You can’t call yourself a business network while crushing business content.

And, I also have to admit a bit of a mea culpa here.  I have actively been hammering that salespeople need to budget at least 20 minutes per day of time on LinkedIn.  I still think that’s true, but for how long? My test results worry me. Eventually, something’s going to give. The question is whether LinkedIn will course-correct before professionals stop bothering to show up.

AI Isn’t Everything – And Ignoring It Is Just as Dumb

Sales Blog, The Navigator News, , ,

I had a presentation last week that didn’t go like I wanted it to. Not because the content was bad – the concepts are solid and the program works and usually helps a lot of people in the room. But because I was in a room where people had decided that if I wasn’t talking about AI in every sentence, I wasn’t worth listening to.

Twenty minutes into a two-hour program, two people literally told me they were tuning me out because I wasn’t incorporating AI into everything I was discussing. Never mind that the program was about fundamental sales principles, sales organization methodology, and sales strategy. Never mind that they’d booked me knowing exactly what I was teaching. Never mind that their own self-analysis scores showed they had serious fundamental problems to address.

They wanted AI. Everything AI. AI as the answer to every question, the solution to every problem, the future of every business function.

And here’s what made it even crazier: Last year, I worked with a different group where the leader banned me from talking about AI at all. AI was the boogeyman. The thing that was going to destroy jobs, eliminate human connection, and ruin everything good about business.

Both approaches are wrong. And if you’re in either camp, you’re losing real money and real competitive advantage.

The AI-Is-Everything Crowd

By now, you probably know how I think. AI is a powerful tool. I use it constantly. Claude and Perplexity have revolutionized how I do research, prepare for client meetings, and develop content. I’ve written about how salespeople should use AI to research prospects, competitors, and their own companies. I’m not anti-AI.  I think AI is a productivity tool, a force multiplier, and a field-leveler between small companies and big ones.

But AI isn’t magic. And it’s not a substitute for knowing what you’re doing.

The group I presented to last week had fundamental sales problems. I’d opened the session with a diagnostic assessment – a simple 9-question health check that scores companies on their sales fundamentals out of 45 points. The best score in the room was 29. The worst was 16. To put that in perspective, anything below 30 indicates significant gaps in sales process, accountability, training, pipeline management, and basic business development discipline.

These companies needed to fix fundamentals. But they didn’t want to hear about fundamentals. They wanted to hear about AI.

No amount of AI is going to fix those problems. AI can make a good sales process more efficient. It can’t create a sales process where none exists. It can help salespeople research faster. It can’t teach them how to ask good questions or conduct thorough Investigation. It can automate follow-up sequences. It can’t build genuine customer relationships.

But they didn’t want to hear that, because AI is hip and trendy. Because talking about AI makes them feel like they’re on the cutting edge. Because it’s more comfortable to focus on shiny new tools than to confront the reality that their basics are broken. And because talking about the basics meant they would have had to make themselves vulnerable.

Here’s the truth – if your sales fundamentals are weak, AI will just help you fail faster and at greater scale. You’ll send more bad emails. You’ll research more prospects you’re not equipped to serve. You’ll automate more processes that don’t work.

Unless your business is actually building AI, developing AI-driven technology, or constructing data centers for AI infrastructure (one guy in the room was building data centers – and he was one of the most engaged participants), AI should not be everything. It should be a tool that enhances what you’re already doing well.

The AI-Is-The-Boogeyman Crowd

On the other end of the spectrum are the leaders who won’t let anyone mention AI. Who think it’s a fad. Who believe that “real salespeople” don’t need technology. Who are convinced that AI is going to eliminate the human element from business relationships.

This is just as wrong, and just as costly.

AI has already changed how buyers research vendors, how they make decisions, and what they expect from salespeople. Your prospects are using AI to research you before they ever take your call. They’re using it to compare alternatives, analyze reviews, and pull together information from multiple sources.

If your salespeople aren’t using the same tools, they’re operating at an information disadvantage. They’re going into calls less prepared than their buyers. They’re competing against salespeople who are leveraging AI to research more thoroughly, prepare more effectively, and operate more efficiently.

Ignoring AI because you’re philosophically opposed to it or scared of it is like refusing to use email in 2005 because you preferred phone calls. The technology isn’t going away. Your competitors are using it. Your buyers are using it. Refusing to engage with it doesn’t make you principled – it makes you obsolete.

There’s a Middle Ground, But Navigating It is Hard

Both extremes miss the real issue. AI is a tool. Not a strategy. Not a replacement for fundamentals. Not optional.

A tool.  Just like my favorite 3/8” drive ratchet in my garage.  I reach for it all the time, but it’s my knowledge and hands that guide it.

The right question isn’t “How do we make everything about AI?” or “How do we avoid AI entirely?” The right question is “Where does AI genuinely enhance what we’re already doing well?”

For sales, that means:

  • Using AI to research prospects before calls so salespeople show up informed and relevant
  • Using AI to track competitors and market trends so salespeople understand the landscape
  • Using AI to analyze your own company’s online presence so you know what buyers are seeing
  • Using AI to draft initial outreach that salespeople then customize and personalize
  • Using AI to help salespeople prepare better questions based on what they’ve learned about a prospect

What it doesn’t mean:

  • Replacing genuine discovery conversations with AI-generated scripts
  • Automating relationship-building
  • Using AI to blast out generic messages at scale
  • Letting AI make strategic decisions about which accounts to pursue
  • Assuming AI can fix fundamental problems with sales process, training, or accountability

The fundamentals still matter. Probably more than ever, because AI has raised the bar for what “adequate” looks like. A salesperson using AI poorly is competing against a salesperson using AI well. The one using it well has better research, better preparation, more relevant outreach, and more efficient processes.

But you still need to know how to sell. You still need to understand the Buyer’s Journey. You still need to conduct thorough Investigation. You still need to build genuine relationships.

AI amplifies what you’re already doing. If you’re doing the right things, AI makes you more effective. If you’re doing the wrong things, AI makes you more efficiently wrong.

Why the Middle Ground Is Hard

I think both extremes exist because the middle ground is uncomfortable. It requires nuance. It requires actually understanding both the fundamentals and the tools. It requires making judgment calls about where AI adds value and where it doesn’t.

It’s easier to declare “AI is everything!” and outsource your thinking to the shiny new tool. It’s easier to declare “AI is nothing!” and dismiss the whole thing as a fad.

What’s harder – but necessary – is saying: “AI is a powerful tool that we need to incorporate thoughtfully into solid fundamentals that we’re already executing well.”

That requires admitting you may have fundamentals to fix. It requires learning new tools. It requires constant evaluation of what’s working and what isn’t. It requires intellectual humility about both traditional approaches and new technologies.

Most people don’t want to do that work. They want simple answers. “Use AI for everything” is simple. “Ignore AI completely” is simple.

“Use AI strategically to enhance solid fundamentals” is complicated. But it’s the only approach that actually works.

What This Means for You

If you’re in the “AI is everything” camp, step back. Ask yourself: Are my fundamentals solid? Do my salespeople know how to conduct discovery? Do we have a real sales process? Do we hold people accountable? Do we train consistently?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, fix that first. Then use AI to make those solid fundamentals more efficient.

If you’re in the “AI is the boogeyman” camp, wake up. Your competitors are using these tools. Your buyers are using these tools. You’re operating at a disadvantage, and that disadvantage is growing every day.

Start small. Have your salespeople use AI to research prospects before calls. Use it to monitor competitors. Use it to understand your own online reputation. Learn what it can do well and what it can’t.

And if you’re trying to navigate the middle ground, keep going. It’s hard. It’s nuanced. It requires constant adjustment. But it’s the only sustainable approach to operating in a market where AI exists and fundamentals still matter.

That’s not sexy. That’s not simple. That’s not a soundbite that fits on a LinkedIn post.

But it’s what actually works.

Have You Earned Your Place in the Buyer’s Journey?

Sales Blog, The Navigator News

It took me a long time to learn one of the hardest truths of sales: buyers don’t owe you anything. They don’t owe you their time. They don’t owe you a meeting. They don’t owe you the courtesy of reading your email or returning your voicemail. And they definitely don’t owe you a place in their buying process just because you decided to call them.

Your access to a buyer’s attention, time, and trust must be earned. Not assumed. Not demanded through persistence. Not manufactured through technique. Earned. This is the concept of earned engagement, and it’s the bridge between understanding the Buyer’s Journey and actually succeeding in the modern market.

Earned engagement is simple in concept: a salesperson’s involvement in a buyer’s decision-making process is extended by buyers who have concluded, based on evidence, that this particular salesperson has something genuinely worth their time.

Buyers complete 70-80% of their purchasing journey before they ever engage with a salesperson. In most cases, they’ve already identified a preferred vendor before the first meeting. That means the sale is largely won or lost before you ever get in the room.  That can either suck or be great, depending on whether or not you are that person.  Knowing the difference is crucial.

The salesperson who waits until a buyer raises their hand to start building credibility has already lost. By the time that buyer is ready to talk, they’ve consumed content, read reviews, talked to peers, and formed opinions – and in most cases, they’ve decided who they want to work with.

The salesperson who has earned engagement isn’t starting from zero when that buyer calls. They’re meeting the buyer wherever the buyer actually is – often deep into Investigation, sometimes approaching Solution – because the preliminary work of building trust and demonstrating expertise has already been done.  This is a new variant of what Harvey Mackay used to call “Digging your well before you’re thirsty.”  Harvey was saying this in a pre-Internet world, and his focus was on networking.  It’s still a great concept for networking – but it has another dimension in today’s world.

Digging Your Well by Building Credibility

So what does this “evidence” look like that earns engagement?

It looks like the LinkedIn presence that consistently demonstrates genuine expertise in the buyer’s industry – not generic motivational quotes or sales tips, but actual insights about the problems buyers are facing.

It looks like thought leadership. The articles. The podcast appearances. The speaking engagements. The content that signals you think seriously about the buyer’s world, not just about closing deals.  Don’t think that you can’t (or shouldn’t) do these things because “you’re a salesperson, not the boss.”  Salespeople are some of the best collectors of stories, best practices, and tribal knowledge in any industry; if you use them to position yourself as a thought leader, you’re ahead of the game.

It looks like referrals from trusted colleagues who have already concluded you’re worth talking to. When a buyer’s peer says “you should talk to this person,” you’ve already earned credibility you could never manufacture on your own.  Unfortunately, few salespeople actively work to earn ad seek referrals.

It looks like timely, specific outreach that references something real about the buyer’s situation. Not “I was in the area and thought I’d stop by.” Not “checking in to see if you need anything.” Actual, relevant value that demonstrates you pay attention.  This, by the way, is where you can use AI tools to monitor your customers and prospects to assist you in paying attention.  I have a webinar coming up in a couple of weeks to demo one great tool for this.

Interrupting vs. Resourcing:

The salesperson who hasn’t earned engagement – who contacts a buyer without a genuine reason, without a specific value proposition, without any prior demonstration of expertise or relationship – is not entering a buyer’s Journey.

They’re interrupting it.

And modern buyers are very, very good at filtering out interruptions. They don’t return calls. They delete emails, and block email addresses. They decline LinkedIn connection requests. Not because they’re rude, but because they’re overwhelmed with interruptions from salespeople who haven’t earned the right to their time.

The salesperson who has earned engagement – who has built presence, demonstrated expertise, and established even a minimal relationship before the buyer’s need became acute – is not an interruption.

They’re a resource.

And resources are welcomed at every stage of the Buyer’s Journey (and even between Buyer’s Journeys), because buyers navigating complex purchasing decisions genuinely want guidance from people they trust.  If you become a person who carries a reputation of helping your customers win, more prospects will want to see you – even if they’re not trying to score that particular win at this particular moment.

You Can’t Rush It, and You Can’t Fake It

Earned engagement is not a tactic. It’s a reputation. It’s built over time through consistent demonstration of genuine expertise and authentic interest in the buyer’s success. You can’t manufacture it with a clever cold email sequence. You can’t create it by being persistent enough. You can’t shortcut it by buying a list and blasting out connection requests.

This frustrates salespeople who are used to controlling their activity. You can decide to make 50 calls today. You can decide to send 100 emails this week. You can decide to attend a networking event tomorrow. But you can’t decide that buyers will engage with you. That’s up to them. And they’ll only do it when you’ve earned it.

It’s Time to Change Your Work Habits

This is why I keep saying that great “closers” do their work early. When the relationship is built and the credibility established, the close is a natural conclusion, not a battle of wills.

The salesperson’s most critical role in the Buyer’s Journey happens in the first two-thirds – but it’s a relationship-building, thought-leadership, and value-demonstration role. It’s a role that encompasses truly valuable and incisive questioning (remember, that’s 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale once a Buyer’s Journey starts), but it’s not a pitching role.

Dig the well before you’re thirsty.

That means:

  • Building your LinkedIn presence today for the buyer who will need you six months from now
  • Creating content that demonstrates expertise, not just promotional material
  • Engaging authentically in industry conversations where your buyers are already paying attention
  • Asking for referrals from satisfied clients who can open doors you can’t open yourself
  • Researching prospects before you reach out so your outreach is actually relevant

It means investing time in activities that don’t produce immediate returns but create the conditions under which buyers will engage when they’re ready.

When You Haven’t Earned It

Here’s how you know you haven’t earned engagement: when your prospecting feels like pushing a boulder uphill. When buyers don’t return calls. When your emails go unanswered. When LinkedIn connection requests get ignored. That’s not bad luck. That’s not a numbers game you need to power through with more activity.

That’s buyers telling you that you haven’t earned their time yet. The response isn’t to push harder. It’s to step back and ask: What am I doing to build credibility and demonstrate value before I ask for their attention?

How to Earn Engagement

You can’t control whether buyers engage with you. But you can control whether you’re building the kind of presence and reputation that makes engagement likely when buyers are ready. Prospecting still has value – and you should do it, because everyone has to start somewhere – but you should also remember that you’re probably targeting buyers who don’t know who you are and don’t have a reason to care. That’s okay, because you can start incorporating parallel habits that build relationships and demonstrate expertise long before you need something from them.

Post valuable insights on LinkedIn. Contribute to industry conversations. Write articles that help buyers think differently about their challenges. Ask happy clients for introductions. Show up where your buyers are and add value without asking for anything in return. Do that consistently, and when buyers enter their Journey, you won’t need to fight for a place in it.

You’ll have already earned it.

You Can’t Create Urgency – But You Can Discover It

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“Troy, how do I get my prospect to move faster? My proposal’s been sitting on their desk for three weeks.” I hear some version of this question constantly. The deal looks good. The buyer likes you. Everything seems aligned. And then… nothing. Radio silence. The whole process stalls out.

So the salesperson tries to go back and “create urgency.” They start pushing. Offering discounts for quick decisions. Talking about how much money the prospect is losing every day they don’t act. Trying to manufacture pressure. The problem is that you can’t create urgency that doesn’t exist. And by the time you’re trying to, it’s already too late.

The Sale Was Lost in Investigation

Remember my principle: 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined by the time you ask your last question. That happens in the Investigation phase of the Buyer’s Journey – not at Decision, where you’re trying to create urgency.

If your proposal is sitting on someone’s desk gathering dust, the problem isn’t that you failed to create urgency at the end. The problem is that you failed to discover and understand their actual timeline and priorities during Investigation. The buyer has already made a decision, and that decision is: this doesn’t warrant action right now. Maybe it never will. And all the fancy objection-handling techniques in the world won’t change that. You can’t close your way out of a problem you questioned (or more appropriately, didn’t question) your way into.

Where Urgency Actually Comes From

Urgency exists – or it doesn’t – in the Motivation and Investigation phases.

At Motivation, something creates dissatisfaction with the status quo. A problem is costing money. A competitor is gaining ground. An opportunity is slipping away. Employees are complaining. Customers are threatening to leave. That dissatisfaction creates energy that drives the rest of the buying process. No dissatisfaction, no energy. No energy, no urgency.

At Investigation, the buyer is trying to understand the problem more clearly – what’s actually wrong, what’s causing it, what the implications are, what needs to change. This is where genuine urgency gets defined and prioritized – or where it dissipates because the problem isn’t as significant as initially thought.  Rushing through this step (which all too many salespeople do) is ignoring 80% of your ability to win the sale.

If you’re presenting solutions before you’ve thoroughly investigated the problem and its urgency, you’re gambling that urgency exists. And if it doesn’t, your proposal will sit there.

The Questions That Uncover Urgency

Here’s what you need to discover during Investigation – and notice, these are all questions for the customer to answer, not statements for you to make:

Does it genuinely benefit them to act sooner? Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. We’re always in love with the benefits of our products, and we always think sooner is better. But does the prospect feel that way? Is there a genuine advantage to acting now versus later?  This is one of those moments where it helps immensely to think like the customer; would you act if you were the customer?

What’s the cost of inaction? Does your prospect have a goal to reach, and what you’re selling is essential to reaching it? Is something happening right now that’s costing money each day it continues? Is the problem creating regular complaints from employees or customers?

Are there barriers to implementation? Do departments need reorganization? Facilities renovated? New staff hired? If your prospect genuinely can’t use – or can’t maximize the use of – your solution yet, you serve them better by helping them plan the staged implementation rather than pushing for a premature decision.

What are the overall corporate priorities? Even if there’s urgency within a department, there might be other priorities the company wants to address first. Maybe they’re revamping their production plant to handle elevated sales, and your financial software – however valuable – isn’t the most urgent priority right now.

Understanding the overall context of the sale is one of the greatest weaknesses I see in salespeople. It’s hard to recognize that your solution lives within the scope of your customer’s entire business, not at the center of it.

The Customer Has to Articulate It

This is critical: The customer has to articulate the consequences of not acting and the benefits of acting sooner. Not you. If you’re telling them they need to act now, it won’t work. If they’re telling you why they need to act now, you have a shot. Contentions only become fact in the sales process when the customer either states them or agrees that your contentions are statements of fact.

A good friend refers to this as “their window being open.” The customer can have needs. You can have the perfect solution. But if their window – their timing – isn’t open, you’re throwing rocks at a closed window. Sure, sometimes you can break the window. But have you ever seen a window owner be delighted that you broke it?

The Tired Tactics Don’t Work Anymore

“If you buy today, it’s at this price, but if you buy next week, the price goes up.”

I tried this crap when I was a brand new car salesman – and customers shoved it down my throat.  “So, if I call back Monday and want to buy this car at that price, you won’t sell it to me for that?” they asked, knowing full well that I would.  It only took two instances of that happening for me to banish that technique from my repertoire forever.  And yet, I still see it being used.

Modern buyers see through this garbage. They know you’re manufacturing pressure. And it makes them uncomfortable. Remember: comfortable customers buy. Pressured customers delay, ghost, or buy from someone who doesn’t make them feel manipulated. What you can do is discover, channel, and accentuate urgency that already exists. You cannot create it from nothing.

The Equation for a Sale to Happen

Need (articulated by customer) + Solution (articulated by salesperson and agreed to by customer) + Timing = Sale

All three elements have to be present. Two out of three doesn’t close deals. If the timing isn’t right – if their window isn’t open – the sale won’t happen. Not because you failed at closing. Because you didn’t discover during Investigation that the timing wasn’t aligned.

When the Sale Still Doesn’t Happen

Even if you do everything right – conduct thorough Investigation, discover genuine urgency, align your solution with their timeline – the sale still sometimes won’t happen.

Because we sell to human beings. Priorities shift. Budgets get redirected. Decision makers leave. Unforeseen circumstances arise. But this approach gives you the best shot. It surfaces timing issues early, when you can still qualify out or adjust your approach. It prevents you from wasting weeks on proposals that were never going to move forward. And it positions you as a consultant who understands their business rather than a salesperson trying to manufacture pressure.

Navigating Urgency

Stop trying to create urgency at the Decision phase. Start discovering it at the Investigation phase.

Ask questions designed to understand their actual timeline and priorities. Surface the real consequences of inaction. Understand the barriers to implementation. Get clarity on where your solution fits within their overall business priorities. And let the customer articulate why acting matters – or doesn’t.

If urgency genuinely exists, your thorough Investigation will uncover it and your proposal will align with it. If urgency doesn’t exist, you’ll discover that too – and you can decide whether to invest more time or move on to opportunities where the window is actually open.

You can’t create urgency. But you can discover it, understand it, and build your entire sales approach around it.

That’s not manipulation. That’s professional selling.

Confused Customers Don’t Buy – And Comfortable Customers Do

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I’ve always said that much of my inspiration for these articles comes from my clients, and this one is an example.  A client said something to me last week that grabbed my attention: “Confused customers don’t buy.”

He was explaining why some salespeople in his industry are losing business. Salespeople do a great presentation – feature-rich, technically thorough, professionally delivered. The prospects nod through the whole thing, ask a few questions, and then say they need time to think it over. Three weeks later, they buy from a competitor.

The salespeople can’t figure out why this happens, but here’s the real reason: “The other company made it clearer what we were actually getting.” Many deals aren’t lost on price. They aren’t lost on features. Not lost on relationship.

They’re lost on clarity.

Your Jargon is Your Enemy

I see it all the time.  Salespeople live in their products every day. They know the terminology, the acronyms, the technical specifications. They talk to colleagues who speak the same language. They read industry publications that use the same shorthand.

And then they walk into a sales call and forget that their customer doesn’t live in that world. API integration. SaaS deployment. ROI modeling. Multi-tenant architecture. Agile methodology. Whatever the jargon is in your industry, you know it cold. Your customer might not.  Worse, they might think they know it – nod along because they don’t want to appear uninformed – and then walk away with a completely incorrect understanding of what you’re proposing.

I watched this happen on a call recently. The salesperson was selling manufacturing software and kept talking about “MES integration” and “real-time data visibility at the cell level.” The prospect – a plant manager who’d been in manufacturing for twenty years – was nodding along. After the call, I had a moment alone with the plant manager, and I asked him what he thought. “I think it sounds good,” he said, “but I’m honestly not sure what half of that means for my operation.”

You might be thinking that I could step in and save the deal at this point – grab the salesperson, pull him back in, give a quick whispered instruction, and re-set the call.  Nope.  We’d been there for an hour and that’s all the time we were allotted.  And the truth of it is that, part of the time, I didn’t know what the hell the salesperson was talking about either! The salesperson thought he’d nailed the presentation. The customer was confused. And confused customers don’t buy.

Are You Talking to a Decision Maker, or an Implementer?

The situation gets worse when the decision maker and the implementer are two different people – and never mistake, they often are. Your IT contact understands “cloud-native microservices architecture” and “containerized deployment.” Great. Talk to them in those terms during discovery.

But when you’re presenting to the CFO who controls the budget, that CFO doesn’t care about microservices. They care about whether this investment will reduce operating costs, improve efficiency, or enable growth. And you’d better know and understand those big-picture advantages as well as you do your jargon.

Too many salespeople present to decision makers the same way they talk to implementers – focusing on technical terminology when they should be focusing on big-picture business advantages. The CFO doesn’t need to understand how the technology works. They need to understand what it does for the business.

“This solution provides real-time visibility into production metrics through our cloud-based MES platform” means nothing to them.

“You’ll know within two hours instead of two days when a production line is running behind schedule, which means you can make decisions that prevent late deliveries to customers” – that they understand.

You see, you’re talking about the same capability in a different language. One creates clarity. The other creates confusion.

Yep, I’ll Say it Again For Those in the Back – Comfortable Customers Buy

I’ve written before about my mantra: comfortable customers buy.

A comfortable customer is one who understands what they’re buying, trusts that it will solve their problem, and feels confident making the decision. Comfort and confusion are opposites. You cannot have both.

When a customer is confused about what you’re proposing – whether it’s because of technical jargon, unclear explanations, or a mismatch between what they care about and what you’re emphasizing – they become uncomfortable.  If they’re pretending to comprehend what you’re saying because they don’t want to look dumb, they get even less comfortable.  And they can’t wait to get you out of the office, because you’re making them feel dumb.

Uncomfortable customers don’t buy. Or they delay. Or they buy from someone who made them feel more comfortable, even if that competitor’s solution is objectively inferior to yours.  Your job is to create comfort through clarity.

How to Create Clarity

Translate, don’t educate. Your job isn’t to teach customers your industry’s terminology. Your job is to translate what you do into terms that match what they care about. If you find yourself using an acronym or technical term, stop and ask yourself: “Would my customer’s CEO understand this?” If not, rephrase it.

Match language to audience. When talking to implementers, use the technical language they expect. When talking to decision makers, use business language. “Reduced latency” for the IT team becomes “faster response times for customers” for the executive. Same thing. Different audience. Different language.

Check for understanding. Don’t assume nodding means comprehension. Periodically check: “Does that make sense in the context of how you’re operating today?” or “How would you explain this to your team?” These questions surface confusion before it kills the deal.  I used to say that “nodding along is a buying sign.”  Now, I’m not so sure.  When in doubt – ask checking questions.

Use analogies and examples. Abstract concepts become clear when you ground them in familiar terms. “Think of it like…” is one of the most powerful phrases in selling. I watched a salesperson explain cloud storage to a non-technical buyer by comparing it to a safety deposit box – you don’t keep it in your building, but you can access it whenever you need it, and it’s more secure than keeping it on-site. The buyer got it immediately.

Focus on outcomes and advantages, not features. Technical features create confusion. Business outcomes create clarity. “Machine learning algorithms” confuses. “The system gets smarter over time and makes better recommendations the longer you use it” clarifies.

How to Test Your Clarity

Here’s a simple test for your next presentation: Could your customer explain what you’re proposing to someone else in their organization? If they can’t, you haven’t created clarity. And if you haven’t created clarity, you haven’t created comfort.

Confused customers don’t buy. They stall. They delay. They ask for more information. They shop your proposal to competitors hoping someone will make it clearer. Or they just go with the vendor who made the decision feel less risky – even if that vendor isn’t offering the best solution.  Ever lost a sale that way?  I have.  It sucks.

Your technical knowledge is valuable. Your industry expertise matters. Your product’s capabilities are important. But none of that creates value for the customer if they don’t understand it.

Be Clear.

Stop assuming your customers speak your language. They don’t. And expecting them to learn it is arrogant and ineffective. Translate technical terms into business outcomes. Match your language to your audience. Check for understanding. Use analogies and examples.

Make clarity your competitive advantage. Because at the end of the day, confused customers don’t buy. Comfortable customers do. And the fastest way to create comfort is to create clarity.

 

You Can’t Control the Sale – And Trying to Will Cost You Everything

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I saw a LinkedIn post this morning that nearly made me spit my iced tea onto my laptop. The author was analyzing a sales call where the rep handled every objection perfectly but still lost the deal. His diagnosis? The rep failed to “set the frame” in the first two minutes. He didn’t establish control of the conversation. He didn’t create an agreed-upon outcome or agenda.

The author’s advice: Master frame control. Own the structure. Establish who’s leading the conversation from the opening moments. And I’m sitting here thinking: This is exactly the kind of advice that’s killing modern B2B sales.

You’re Trying to Control Them

Here’s what this LinkedIn guru was preaching:

The loss didn’t happen when the rep failed to close. It happened in the first two minutes when he failed to “set the frame.” No agenda. No agreed-upon outcome. No “here’s how this conversation is going to work.” So when objections came, the rep was playing defense on the prospect’s terms. Every rebuttal – even the good ones – left him one step behind.

The solution, according to this post? Learn to control the frame. Establish who’s leading. Own the structure of the conversation.

This is the trap that sales trainers have been teaching for decades. And it’s complete garbage for modern B2B selling.

The Problem With “Control”

The post went on about closing techniques. Better rebuttals. Smarter comebacks. The perfect response to objections. His underlying message was that closing is won in the opening two minutes when you establish who’s leading the conversation. When you “set the frame.” When you demonstrate that you’re in control.  Pretty manly, right?  Kinda badass.

Here’s the problem with this analysis: it’s stuck in 1955. In 2026, the customer is the star of the show. Not you.

You don’t win by “establishing who’s leading the conversation.” You win by making it clear from the first question that this conversation is about them – their challenges, their goals, their definition of success. You are consciously and intentionally putting your customer in the spotlight – because that’s where the customer belongs. When you open a sales call worrying about who’s “in control,” you’ve already lost. Because the customer feels it. They sense that you’re maneuvering them instead of understanding them.

And modern buyers – especially Millennials and Gen Z who now represent over 70% of B2B decision-makers – can smell manipulation from a mile away.

You Can Win Without Control

The Buyer’s Journey is the focus. Not your rehearsed pitch. Not your carefully crafted “frame.” Not your clever agenda designed to “control” where the conversation goes. Here’s what that rep probably should have done in those first two minutes – instead of trying to “set the frame”:

Ask questions that put the customer at the center.

“What prompted you to take this call today?”

“What does success look like for you if we solve this problem?”

“Walk me through what’s not working right now.”

And of course, quite a few more – comprehensive questioning wins. Those questions don’t “control the frame.” They do something far more powerful: they build influence by demonstrating genuine curiosity about the customer’s world. Real influence beats fake control seven days a week and twice on Sunday.

Remember my principle: 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined by the time you ask your last question. That happens in the Investigation phase of the Buyer’s Journey. You can’t investigate effectively if you’re busy trying to control the conversation. Investigation requires genuine curiosity, not tactical maneuvering.

When Objections Come Up

And when objections come up (they don’t always have to – particularly if your questioning is thorough) – you don’t “rebut” them. You use them to understand the customer’s definition of success and build your solution around it.  “Rebutting” puts you in opposition to your customer. And when you’re in opposition, you always lose. Even when you “win” the argument, you lose the sale.

Think about that for a second. You successfully overcome their price objection with a brilliant ROI argument. You prove they’re wrong to be concerned. You win the debate. And they still don’t buy.

Why? Because you just spent fifteen minutes proving that you’re smarter than they are. You made them feel foolish for raising the concern. You positioned yourself as the expert who knows better than they do about their own business. Nobody wants to buy from someone who makes them feel stupid.  When I debated in high school and college, we didn’t mind making the other team feel stupid – but we didn’t want the judge to feel stupid.  The judge decided who won and who lost.

Your customer is your judge.

Now It’s All About Buyer Empowerment

Salespeople never truly “control” anything. We can seek influence. We can earn trust. We can provide insights and perspectives that help customers make better decisions. Control? That’s a fantasy.

“Frame control isn’t a tactic.” It’s a relic of an era when buyers had no information and salespeople held all the cards. That era is as gone as the Studebaker Motor Company (and yes, I like vintage Studebakers a hell of a lot more than “control” sales techniques).

Today’s buyers research independently. They know more about your product than you think they do. They’ve read reviews, talked to peers, and formed opinions before you ever get on the call. They don’t need you to control anything. They need you to add value they can’t get anywhere else. That value comes from understanding them better than they understand themselves. From asking questions that make them think differently about their problem. From positioning solutions in the context of what they’re actually trying to achieve.

How to Understand Influence vs. Control

Here’s the fundamental difference:

Control is about you. It’s about your agenda, your process, your predetermined outcome. It’s about getting the customer to go where you want them to go.  You’re putting yourself in the spotlight and making yourself the star.

Influence is about them. It’s about understanding their challenges deeply enough that your insights change how they think. It’s about asking questions they haven’t considered. It’s about helping them see implications and consequences they’ve overlooked.

Control creates resistance. Influence creates partnership. When you try to control the conversation, customers push back. They resist your agenda. They throw up objections to slow you down because they can feel you trying to steer them somewhere. When you seek to influence through understanding, customers lean in. They share more. They think harder. They trust you with information they wouldn’t give to a “frame controller.”

Put This Into Practice

Stop opening calls with agendas designed to control where the conversation goes. Start opening calls with questions designed to understand where the customer is.

Stop preparing perfect rebuttals for every objection. Start preparing questions that help you understand what’s really driving those objections.

Stop trying to “establish who’s leading.” Start demonstrating through your questions that you’re genuinely curious about their business, their challenges, and their goals.

The irony is that when you stop trying to control the conversation and start trying to understand the customer, you actually develop more influence than you ever had with “frame control,” because customers can tell the difference between someone trying to manipulate them and someone genuinely trying to help them.

If You Don’t Own the Structure, You Don’t Own the Sale?

The “frame control” crowd will tell you: “If you don’t own the structure of the conversation, you don’t own the sale.” Horse hockey. If you don’t own the customer’s trust, you don’t own anything.

You can have perfect control of the conversation structure and still lose the deal – because the customer never trusted that you cared about their success more than your commission. Or, you can focus on understanding the customer’s world so deeply that they trust you to guide them through their decision – not because you controlled the frame, but because you earned their confidence through genuine insight.

Start Navigating Influence

Stop trying to control the sale. Start trying to understand the customer. Stop obsessing over closing techniques, rebuttals, and frame control. Start obsessing over asking better questions, listening more carefully, and providing insights that customers can’t get anywhere else.

Stop positioning yourself as the expert who knows better. Start positioning yourself as the partner who understands their world. Influence beats control every single time.

The modern buyer doesn’t want to be controlled. They want to be understood. They want someone who asks smart questions, listens to the answers, and builds solutions around their actual needs – not around a predetermined pitch. Give them that, and you won’t need to control anything. They’ll want to buy from you because you’ve demonstrated that you actually understand their business and genuinely care about their success.

That’s not frame control. That’s professional selling. And to that LinkedIn guru preaching about “setting the frame”? Your advice is outdated, manipulative, and exactly why modern buyers are skeptical of salespeople.

Stop it.

The “One More” Philosophy: Why Incremental Improvement Beats Massive Change Every Time

Sales Blog, The Navigator News

I had a conversation last week with a salesperson who was frustrated with his results. He’d been reading sales books, listening to podcasts, and absorbing content from LinkedIn influencers. He was fired up and ready to completely overhaul his approach. “I’m going to rebuild my entire prospecting process,” he told me. “New messaging, new cadence, new everything. I’m going to document it all and create a whole system.”

I asked him when he was going to start. “Well, I need to block out some time to really think through the strategy. Probably next month when things slow down.” Translation: Never.

This is the trap I see salespeople, sales managers, and business owners fall into constantly. They want massive transformation. They create huge projects out of small tasks. And then they do nothing because the project feels too big to start.

Remember – You Probably Don’t Completely Suck

Here’s what happens when you decide to completely overhaul something:

You get excited about the vision. You imagine how much better everything will be once you’ve rebuilt your entire approach from the ground up. You start planning the project – all the steps, all the components, all the changes you need to make.

And then reality hits. You’re busy. You have quotas to hit. You have current prospects to manage. You don’t actually have three weeks to disappear into a conference room and rebuild your sales process. So you don’t start. The massive change project sits on your to-do list, making you feel guilty every time you see it, while you keep doing exactly what you’ve always done.

And the truth is that what you’ve always done probably doesn’t completely suck.  If it did, you wouldn’t be making a living.

Meanwhile, the salesperson who added one new question to their discovery process three months ago has asked that question on fifty calls by now. They’ve learned what works, refined the wording, and incorporated it into their natural flow – and they’ve discarded what doesn’t work. Guess who’s actually improved?

“One More” Works

Instead of massive change projects, embrace the “one more” philosophy. Learn one more question. Get one more appointment. Make one more call. Read one more chapter. Try one more approach.

One more. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.

It sounds almost insultingly simple, but here’s why it works: You can actually do it. Today. Right now. Without planning, without blocking out time, without creating a project plan. Want to improve your discovery questioning? Don’t rebuild your entire discovery process. Learn one more question that helps you understand buyer motivation. Use it on your next three calls. See what happens. Adjust if needed. Then learn another one.

Want to hit your appointment targets more consistently? Don’t redesign your entire prospecting approach. Make one more call today than you made yesterday. Tomorrow, do it again. Want to get better at handling price objections? Don’t create a comprehensive objection-handling playbook. Learn one more way to respond to “your price is too high.” Try it on your next call. See if it works better than what you’ve been saying.

Why This Actually Creates Change

Incremental improvement is like interest at the bank. It compounds.

One more question doesn’t sound like much. But if you learn one new question per month and actually use it, you’ll have twelve new questions in your arsenal by this time next year (and probably discarded 12 weaker ones). Your discovery conversations will be dramatically better – not because you overhauled everything at once, but because you kept adding one more piece.

One more appointment per week doesn’t sound impressive. But that’s fifty-two more appointments per year. At even modest close rates, that’s significant revenue impact – achieved not through heroic effort, but through consistent incremental improvement. The math works in your favor when you stack small improvements over time.  Just like compound interest.

Apply “One More” to the Buyer’s Journey

Remember, 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined by the time you ask your last question. That happens in the Investigation phase of the Buyer’s Journey. You don’t improve Investigation by completely rebuilding how you conduct discovery calls. You improve it by adding one more insightful question. Then another. Then another.

Over time, your Investigation becomes comprehensive and customer-centric – not because you created a massive project, but because you kept asking “what’s one more thing I should understand about my buyer’s situation?”

The same principle applies to every phase of the Buyer’s Journey:

Motivation: Learn one more way to highlight dissatisfaction with the status quo. Solution: Add one more way to demonstrate how your solution addresses their specific needs. Evaluation: Get one percent better at presenting pricing confidently. Decision: Try one more approach to asking for the business. None of these require massive change projects. All of them improve your results.

For Sales Managers and Business Owners

This philosophy applies to developing your team just as much as it applies to individual salespeople.

Stop trying to overhaul everything all at once (unless you truly have a dumpster fire). Instead, focus on one improvement this month. Maybe it’s getting everyone to ask one specific question during discovery. Maybe it’s having everyone make one more prospecting call per day. Maybe it’s implementing one simple accountability metric. One thing. Get everyone doing it consistently. Then add the next thing.

The sales managers who succeed aren’t the ones with the most elaborate systems on paper. They’re the ones who actually get their teams to change behavior – which happens through small, consistent improvements, not massive overhauls.  Again – compound interest.

The Discipline of Small Steps

Here’s the hard part about the “one more” philosophy: It requires discipline.

Massive change projects are exciting. They feel important. You can talk about them in meetings. You can create presentations about your vision for transformation. One more question? One more call? That doesn’t feel exciting. It feels almost embarrassingly small. But small and done beats big and planned every single time.  My friend Darren LaCroix has a great saying:  “Done is more profitable than perfect,” and he’s right.

The discipline is in actually doing the one more thing every day, even when it doesn’t feel significant. In trusting that these small improvements compound. In resisting the urge to create a massive project instead of just taking the next small step.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Start today. Not next week when you have more time. Today. Pick one thing – one question, one activity, one skill – that would improve your results if you did it better or more often. Do it one more time today than you normally would.

Tomorrow, do it again. Don’t create a project plan. Don’t document a comprehensive new system. Don’t wait for the perfect time to overhaul everything.  You don’t need a whiteboard or a new app for this. Just do one more.

Next month, pick another one. Keep the first one going, and add a second small improvement. By the end of the year, you’ll have made twelve small improvements that have become habits. Your results will be dramatically different – not because you executed one massive change, but because you stacked twelve small ones.

Reaping Your Rewards

Real improvement in sales doesn’t come from massive transformation projects that never get started. It comes from small, consistent, incremental changes that actually get implemented. Stop planning the overhaul. Stop creating the comprehensive new system. Stop waiting for the perfect time to make big changes.

Learn one more question. Make one more call. Try one more approach. One more. Do it today. Do it again tomorrow. Stack these improvements over time.  Make compound interest work for you.

That’s how good salespeople become great ones. Not through dramatic transformation, but through relentless incremental improvement.

What’s your one more for today?