I saw a post from another sales trainer yesterday that annoyed me enough to write about it. He said:

“Pick one communication channel at a time. Email, voicemail, LinkedIn InMail, and text all go to the same place. When you give me the same bad reason to respond in 2, 3, or more of these at the same time, I’m out. Pick one. Next time, try another. Less is more.”

This is outdated nonsense from someone who’s clearly out of touch with how younger buyers operate. And if you follow this advice, you’re going to lose deals to competitors who understand modern communication.

The Fundamental Problem with “Less is More”

Here’s what this trainer misses: The salesperson did exactly the right thing. When you leave a voicemail or send an email, you should absolutely give the prospect multiple ways to respond—phone, text, email, LinkedIn. Why? Because you don’t know which method they prefer.

Some buyers live in email. Some never check voicemail but respond to texts within minutes. Others prefer LinkedIn. Still others want to call back. When you only say “call me at this number,” you’re forcing them into your preferred channel instead of letting them respond through theirs.

I used to agree with “less is more.” Twenty years ago, it made sense. Back then, there were two channels—phone and email. You left a voicemail with your phone number, or you sent an email with your email address. Simple.

But things have changed, and my viewpoint has changed with them. Today’s buyers—particularly younger ones—expect communication versatility. When you give them multiple response options, you’re not being confusing. You’re being respectful of their preferences.

What the Data Actually Shows

Here’s what I’ve seen in real-world selling: Giving prospects multiple response options increases response frequency. It’s not even close. When my clients’ salespeople say “respond however works best for you—call, text, email, or LinkedIn,” they get significantly more responses than when they only provide a phone number.

And here’s the kicker: The most common response method these days is text, not phone call. Think about that. If you’re following the “pick one channel” advice and only give them your phone number, you’re missing the channel that gets the highest response rate from younger buyers.

For every one prospect who gets confused by multiple response options, there are two who appreciate the flexibility and respect the courtesy. And that ratio is growing as generational dynamics shift the buyer population younger.

The Generational Disconnect

The trainer who posted this is obviously not a young man. His perspective reflects how Boomers and older Gen X prefer to operate—you leave a voicemail with a callback number, or you send an email and they email back. One channel in, same channel out.

Gen Z and younger Millennials don’t operate this way. They’re channel-agnostic. They might get your voicemail but prefer to text back. Or read your email but respond via LinkedIn. When you only give them one way to respond, you’re forcing them to use your preferred method instead of theirs. And in today’s empowered buyer environment, that’s backwards. – and the buyer just opts out of the process.

The Real Issue Isn’t Multiple Options—It’s Bad Messaging

Let’s address what the trainer actually said: “When you give me the same bad reason to respond in 2, 3, or more of these at the same time, I’m out.” Notice the key phrase: “same bad reason to respond.”

The problem isn’t offering multiple ways to respond. The problem is having a bad reason to respond in the first place. If your value proposition sucks, offering five ways to decline doesn’t make it better—it just gives them more options to ignore you. But if you have a genuinely compelling reason for the prospect to engage, giving them multiple response options increases the likelihood they’ll actually respond through their preferred method.

This is like blaming the return address options when the letter itself is junk mail. The issue isn’t the response mechanism. It’s the message.

How to Actually Do This Right

I work with salespeople who successfully reach decision-makers every day. Here’s what works:

First, craft a compelling, specific reason to engage that’s relevant to that prospect. Not generic messaging, but research-based outreach that demonstrates you understand their business.

Second, when you reach out—voicemail, email, or LinkedIn—give them multiple ways to respond. “You can call me at 913-555-1212, text me at the same number, email me at troy@example.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn. Whatever works best.”

One message. Multiple response options.

The response rate destroys the old “give them one number and wait” method. And responses come through whichever channel the prospect finds most convenient—which, increasingly, is text.

The Aging-In Effect

The communication preferences of younger buyers aren’t a temporary quirk. As Gen Z and younger Millennials move into decision-making roles, expecting multiple response options becomes standard, not exceptional.

Salespeople who give prospects flexibility in how they respond will win. Those who cling to “just give them one number” advice will find themselves shut out by buyers who view that rigid approach as out of touch and inconvenient.

What You Should Actually Do

When you reach out—voicemail, email, LinkedIn, whatever—give them multiple ways to respond. Don’t just say “call me.” Say “call, text, email, or message me on LinkedIn—whatever works best.”

Make it easy for them to respond through their preferred channel, not yours. This isn’t confusing. It’s courteous.  Remember, you aren’t the star of the show.  Your prospect is. And make sure your value proposition is compelling. If you’re getting pushback on offering multiple response options, the problem isn’t the options. It’s the message.

The world has changed. Buyers have changed. If your sales advice hasn’t, you’re teaching people how to lose deals to more adaptable competitors.

Less isn’t more. Flexibility is more.

There’s a fundamental truth about sales management that most leaders refuse to accept:

The right behavior can overcome the incorrect tools, but the right tools cannot overcome the incorrect behaviors.

Read that again. Let it sink in. Because if you’re a sales manager or business owner constantly frustrated by your team’s performance, this principle explains why all your “solutions” keep failing.  And if you’re a salesperson who’s asking for more and better “tools,” it might give you a window into your own path forward.

What You Need is Profitable Behavior Change.

The most important thing business owners and sales managers can do is produce what I call “profitable behavior change.” This is when a salesperson’s behavior is changed through coaching, direction, or other corrective means to produce a result that’s profitable for the company, the salesperson, and most likely the company’s customers as well.

The ability to coach and produce profitable behavior change is the most fundamental skill of management. Period.  When I interview potential managers, this is what I’m looking for.  And it’s not just the ability – it’s the willingness.

Yet everywhere I look, I see managers trying to fix systems instead of fixing behaviors. Rather than having the difficult conversation with a subordinate about changing what they do, managers tinker with CRMs, redesign compensation plans, and add more procedures to already bloated process manuals (I once saw a sales management process manual that was 490 pages, covering “every” possible eventuality). It’s easier to blame the system than to address the behavior. It’s more comfortable to implement a new tool than to have a tough coaching conversation.

And it doesn’t work.

Does Your CRM Need Fixing?

Here’s a conversation I’ve had more times than I can count:

Manager: “Our CRM isn’t working. We need a better system.”

Me: “What do you mean it’s not working?”

Manager: “Nobody’s using it properly. We’re not getting the data we need.”

Me: “Were they using the old CRM properly?”

Manager: “Well, no, but this new one will be more intuitive.”

Let me save you the six-figure investment and months of implementation headaches: If your salespeople aren’t using the current CRM, they won’t use the new one either. The problem isn’t the tool. The problem is that nobody has required, coached, or held your team accountable for using it. You have a behavior problem masquerading as a technology problem.

Fixing the CRM without fixing the behavior is like buying a treadmill for someone who won’t exercise. You’ll have a really expensive piece of equipment that nobody uses, just like you did before.  When I was a sales manager, my philosophy was, “If it’s not in CRM, it didn’t happen.”  And I’d enforce that.  Sometimes, a salesperson would come to me about a customer situation.  I’d look it up in CRM, and I’d find that the interaction he was referring to wasn’t in there.  I’d send him back to put it in before I’d help with it.  Was it a pain for him and a delay?  Yep.  But I didn’t have to do that too many times before everything made it into CRM.

Your Compensation Plan Won’t Fix Behaviors.

Another classic example: constantly reworking compensation plans to incentivize behaviors that management isn’t coaching or teaching.

“If we just adjust the commission structure, they’ll start prospecting more.”

“If we add a bonus for account growth, they’ll focus on upselling.”

“If we change the quota calculation, they’ll work harder.”

No, they won’t.

Compensation plans don’t teach people how to prospect effectively. They don’t show people how to identify upsell opportunities. They don’t give people the skills or discipline to do the work. What happens instead? You create a more complicated compensation plan that’s harder to track, more confusing to explain, and generates more disputes about payouts. Meanwhile, the behaviors you wanted to change remain exactly the same.

You cannot compensate your way out of a coaching deficit.

Over-Proceduralization is a Disease.

Then there’s the tendency to over-proceduralize and overcomplicate systems and processes rather than giving subordinates the mission of their position and coaching them to fulfill it.

I see this constantly in sales organizations: massive process manuals, endless checklists, approval workflows that require sign-offs from three different people, and standardized templates for every possible customer interaction. The theory is that if you make the process detailed enough, foolproof enough, and controlled enough, people will automatically do the right things.

The reality is that you’ve created a bureaucracy that slows everyone down, frustrates your best performers, and still doesn’t fix the underlying behavior problems. Here’s what’s missing: clarity about the actual mission and ongoing coaching to help people achieve it.

Instead of a 47-page process manual, try this: “Your mission is to identify and close new business that’s profitable for the company and valuable for the customer. Here’s what good looks like. Now let’s work together on how you’re going to do that.” Then coach. Daily if necessary.

Why Managers Choose Systems Over Behavior

So why do smart managers keep making this mistake?

Because fixing systems feels productive. You can have meetings about it. You can create project plans. You can show visible progress. You can say you’re “doing something” about the problem.

Coaching behavior change is harder. It requires difficult conversations. It means telling people their current approach isn’t working. It involves ongoing attention and follow-up. You can’t just implement it and move on.

Systems work is comfortable. Behavioral coaching is uncomfortable. But only one of them actually works.

What Profitable Behavior Change Actually Looks Like

Real behavior change starts with clarity: What specific behavior needs to change, and what does the new behavior look like?

Not “we need better CRM compliance.” That’s a system metric.

Instead: “You need to document every customer interaction within 24 hours with notes that include next steps and timeline. Here’s why that matters and here’s how to do it efficiently.”

Then comes the coaching part: Following up, reviewing, providing feedback, holding people accountable, and reinforcing the behavior until it becomes habit.

This takes time. It takes attention. It takes consistency. But it works.

Once the behavior changes, the right tools can amplify the results. A good CRM makes proper documentation easier. A well-designed compensation plan rewards the behaviors you’ve already coached people to do. Efficient processes support the mission you’ve clearly defined. The tools come second. Behavior comes first.

The Bottom Line

Stop buying new systems hoping they’ll fix your people problems. Stop redesigning compensation plans expecting them to teach skills you haven’t coached. Stop adding procedures thinking they’ll replace the management conversations you’re avoiding.

The right behavior can overcome incorrect tools. Your best salespeople will figure out how to succeed even with a clunky CRM, a mediocre comp plan, or imperfect processes.

But the right tools cannot overcome incorrect behaviors. No CRM, no matter how sophisticated, will make lazy salespeople diligent. No compensation plan will teach people how to sell. No process manual will replace actual management.

Focus on coaching profitable behavior change. Have the difficult conversations. Invest the time in teaching, following up, and holding people accountable. Get the behaviors right first. Then optimize the tools to support those behaviors.

Everything else is just expensive procrastination.

Your LinkedIn profile isn’t a digital resume. It’s not a placeholder. And it’s definitely not something you can set up once and forget about – but if you’re like many of the people I talk to, that’s exactly what you’ve done.  When I’m speaking, I’ll often ask, “Raise your hand if you’re on LinkedIn.”  Most, if not all, of the hands go up. Then I’ll say, “Keep your hand up if you have actively used LinkedIn in the last two days.”  I get a lot of sheepish looks and the hands go down.

More than half of the people reading this haven’t touched their LinkedIn profile in more than a year – unless it was to add a new job.  Your profile is making a business case for you every single day – whether you know it or not.

Your Buyers are Looking You Up.

Here’s what’s happening right now: A prospect is considering whether to take a meeting with your company. Before they respond to that email or return that call, they’re looking up your leadership team on LinkedIn. They’re not just checking job titles. They’re evaluating whether you and your team are engaged in the modern business landscape. They’re assessing credibility, expertise, and whether you understand the challenges they face.

A bare-bones profile with outdated information, maybe no profile picture, and no activity doesn’t just reflect poorly on you. It raises questions about your entire organization. If your leadership team can’t be bothered to maintain professional profiles, what does that say about how engaged you are with customers, with innovation, with your market?

Research shows that most B2B buyers are more likely to purchase when an executive’s profile demonstrates impact and achievement. Your profile is influencing buying decisions before you ever get the chance to present.

The Generational Factor Makes This More Pronounced.

This matters even more when you consider generational dynamics. Younger decision-makers – Millennials and Gen Z buyers who now make up a significant portion of B2B purchasing – expect to find robust professional profiles. They’ve grown up researching everything online before making decisions. When they can’t find substantive information about your leadership team, or when they find profiles that haven’t been updated in years, they move on to competitors who demonstrate they’re current and engaged.

Profile vs. Presence: Both Matter

A great LinkedIn profile is table stakes. But it’s only the beginning. Your profile tells people who you are. Your content and engagement show them how you think. The most effective business leaders on LinkedIn do both:

• They maintain profiles that clearly articulate their expertise and impact
• They consistently create content that demonstrates thought leadership
• They engage authentically with their professional community

You can have the perfect profile, but if you never post, never comment, and never engage, you’re missing the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise in real-time.

Building a Profile That Works

Here’s what separates profiles that generate business opportunities from those that sit idle:

Tell a story, not a resume. Your About section shouldn’t list job responsibilities. It should articulate the problems you solve, the value you create, and why you do what you do. Write it in first person. Make it conversational. Show personality while maintaining professionalism.

Lead with impact, not titles. Instead of “VP of Sales,” try “Helping B2B companies navigate generational dynamics to build high-performing sales teams.” Your headline should make someone want to learn more, not just identify your organizational position.

Use your experience section strategically. Don’t just list what you did – explain the outcomes you achieved. Quantify results where possible. Show progression and growth. Demonstrate that you’ve solved problems similar to what your prospects face.

Keep it current. An outdated profile signals you’re not engaged. Update your experience when roles change. Refresh your About section periodically to reflect current focus areas. Add new skills and certifications as you acquire them.

A Professional photo matters. This seems obvious, but the number of executives with outdated, unprofessional, or missing photos is staggering. Your photo should be recent, professional quality, and appropriate for your industry.

Quality Content Matters.

Once your profile is solid, the real work begins: consistent content creation and authentic engagement. LinkedIn isn’t a static advertising platform – it’s a networking site that is content-based.  This doesn’t mean posting daily motivational quotes, sportsball pictures, or sharing generic business articles. It means:

Sharing your perspective on industry trends. What are you seeing in your market? What’s changing? What should your prospects be thinking about?

Demonstrating expertise through original insights. You’re smart and you know things.  Show it.  Write posts that show how you think about business challenges. Challenge conventional wisdom when appropriate. Offer frameworks and actionable advice.

Engaging authentically with your network. Comment meaningfully on others’ posts. Ask questions. Share experiences. Build relationships through genuine professional discourse, not superficial “great post!” responses (yawn).

Being consistent. Posting once every three months doesn’t build visibility. Regular engagement – even just 2-3 times per week – keeps you in your network’s awareness and signals to LinkedIn’s algorithm that you’re an active, valuable contributor.

Lead by Example

If you’re a CEO or senior leader, your LinkedIn presence sets the tone for your entire organization. When leadership engages authentically on LinkedIn, it empowers employees to do the same. This creates an advocacy engine that attracts clients, talent, and opportunities. – but it has to be authentic. Employees can spot manufactured corporate messaging instantly, and it backfires. Share real insights, real challenges, real wins. Be human while being professional.  “I’ll just let the marketing department handle that” is a road to failure.

The Bottom Line

Your LinkedIn profile and presence are working for you or against you right now. There’s no neutral position. Every prospect who researches you, every candidate who considers joining your team, every potential partner who evaluates working with you – they’re forming opinions based on what they find (or don’t find) on LinkedIn.

The question isn’t whether you need a strong LinkedIn presence. The question is whether yours is opening doors or quietly closing them. Take an honest look at your profile today. Would a prospect who found it be more or less likely to take a meeting? Would a top candidate be impressed or concerned?  For that matter – would you be more or less likely to buy from yourself, based on your profile?

If the answer doesn’t make you confident, it’s time to invest in building a presence that reflects the professional you actually are – not the outdated snapshot from five years ago. Your profile is making a business case every day. Make sure it’s the case you want to make.

Sometimes the universe delivers perfect teaching moments right to your doorstep. Today, within the span of one hour, I experienced two prospecting approaches that were so spectacularly awful, I had to write about them.

These weren’t just bad sales calls. They were masterclasses in how to ensure a prospect will never, ever buy from you. And the scary part? I bet the salespeople involved think they’re being persistent and professional. They’re not. They’re being desperate and tone-deaf. And there’s a huge difference.

Disaster #1: The Uninvited Calendar Terrorist

A few weeks ago, I had a LinkedIn message exchange with someone who sells some sort of program to help speakers raise their profile. There are thousands of these people out there, and most of them just separate speakers from their money, but I was polite. I told her I might be interested in a conversation at some point, but that this wasn’t that point.

Clear communication, right? Apparently not clear enough. The next thing I knew, I received a Zoom meeting invitation from someone who works for her. Not a request to schedule a call. Not a follow-up message asking when might be convenient. An actual calendar invitation for a specific time and date.

I never asked for this call. I never agreed to this call. Someone just decided to put a meeting on my calendar without permission. I responded and declined, explaining that I was too busy to even devote head space to this topic right now. His response? He’d send a different invitation for a month out. I told him more vehemently that I didn’t appreciate the tactic and had no interest because of it.

Today – weeks later – I received and declined yet another unsolicited Zoom calendar invitation from this same guy. Let me be crystal clear about what this approach accomplishes: It ensures I will never, under any circumstances, buy from this company. Ever.

Disaster #2: The Incomprehensible Cold Caller

While I was still shaking my head about the calendar terrorist, my phone rang. It was a cold call from some company promising to get me in front of thought leaders. I’ve heard this pitch a thousand times from a hundred different companies.

But here’s where it got interesting. The caller spoke with a very heavy accent and spoke very quickly. I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying. So I did what any reasonable person would do – I politely told her I couldn’t understand what she was saying and asked her to restate it more slowly. She repeated the exact same well-rehearsed pitch in exactly the same way.

I tried again. “I’m sorry, but I still can’t understand you. Could you please slow down?” Same pitch. Same speed. Same result. Finally, I told her the truth: “If I can’t understand what you’re saying, I’m not going to buy anything. It’s not my job to understand you – it’s your job to speak clearly.”

She hung up.

The Common Thread of Tone-Deafness

Both of these disasters share the same fundamental problem: complete disregard for the prospect’s communication preferences and boundaries. The calendar terrorist heard “not now” and interpreted it as “send me unsolicited meeting invitations until I give up and take the call.” The cold caller heard “I can’t understand you” and decided that repeating the same incomprehensible script was the solution. Neither one of them was actually listening. They were both just executing their processes, regardless of what the prospect was telling them.

This isn’t persistence. Persistence means continuing to provide value over time while respecting boundaries. This is just being pushy and annoying.

What These Approaches Actually Accomplish

Let’s be honest about what tactics like these really achieve:

They damage your reputation. Every unsolicited calendar invitation, every ignored request to slow down, every boundary you cross makes you look desperate and unprofessional.

They eliminate future opportunities. I might have been interested in that speaker program at some point. Not anymore. The approach killed any possibility of a future conversation.

They waste everyone’s time. How much time did that guy spend sending me multiple calendar invitations? How much more productive would it have been to respect my initial response and follow up appropriately later?

They reinforce negative stereotypes about salespeople. Every pushy, tone-deaf interaction makes it harder for professional salespeople to get the respect and attention they deserve.  Honestly, this one makes me madder than any of them.  Our profession doesn’t NEED any more negative stereotypes.

The Right Way to Handle These Situations

Here’s what should have happened in both cases:

Scenario 1: When I said “not now,” the appropriate response would have been, “I understand. When would be a better time to revisit this conversation?” Or even better: “No problem. I’ll check back with you in a few months to see if your situation has changed.”

Scenario 2: When I said I couldn’t understand, the appropriate response would have been to slow down, speak more clearly, or even suggest we continue the conversation via email where language barriers might be less of an issue.

In both cases, the salespeople should have adapted their approach based on what the prospect was telling them. That’s what professionals do.

The Bigger Picture Problem

These two disasters highlight a broader issue in sales today: too many people are following scripts and processes without thinking about the human being on the other end.  Good prospecting requires reading the room, adapting to feedback, and respecting boundaries. It requires treating prospects like human beings with preferences and priorities, not just names on a list to be processed through your system.

When someone tells you “not now,” that’s valuable information. When someone asks you to slow down, that’s helpful feedback. When someone sets a boundary, that’s important data about how they prefer to be approached. Ignoring all of that in favor of your predetermined process isn’t persistence – it’s professional malpractice.

The Bottom Line

Both of these salespeople probably think they’re being diligent and thorough. They’re probably tracking their “touches” in their CRM and reporting to their managers about their consistent follow-up. What they’re actually doing is burning bridges, damaging their company’s reputation, and ensuring that prospects will go out of their way to avoid doing business with them.

Professional selling means adapting your approach based on what your prospects tell you. It means respecting boundaries. It means listening more than you talk. If you can’t do those basic things, you’re not in sales. You’re in harassment. And there’s a big difference between the two.

Your prospects know the difference, even if you don’t.

I wrote an article about staying relevant in sales about ten years ago. At the time, I thought it was pretty insightful. Looking back now, I realize I had no idea how urgent that message would become.

The conversation that sparked that original article was with a friend who’d just left his sales management position. He told me he’d gotten frustrated because “only ten percent of the people I was dealing with are even relevant in today’s market, and ninety percent not only aren’t relevant, they don’t want to be.”

That was ten years ago. Today, I’d bet the percentage of irrelevant salespeople is even higher.

Why? Because the forces that were just beginning to reshape our profession back then have now completely transformed the sales landscape. And too many salespeople are still fighting yesterday’s war with yesterday’s weapons.

What’s Changed (And What Hasn’t)

When I wrote that original article, buyer empowerment was just starting to become a real issue. Today, buyers don’t just have access to information – they have access to better information than most salespeople do. They can research your company, your competitors, your pricing, and your customers’ experiences before you even know they exist.

The generational shift I was beginning to see then has now completely taken over. Millennial and Gen-Z buyers don’t just prefer different communication styles – they operate from fundamentally different assumptions about how business gets done. What Baby Boomers saw as relationship-building, younger buyers often see as time-wasting.

And then there’s the elephant in the room that wasn’t even visible ten years ago: AI. Artificial intelligence isn’t coming to transform sales – it’s already here. Your prospects are using AI to research vendors. Your competitors might be using AI to identify and reach prospects faster than you can. And if you’re not paying attention, AI might just make you irrelevant without you even noticing.

The Definition Still Matters

Merriam-Webster defines “relevant” as “having significant or demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand.” That definition hasn’t changed in ten years, but what constitutes “the matter at hand” certainly has.

If “the matter at hand” is helping your customers make profitable buying decisions, are you truly adding “significant or demonstrable bearing” to that process? Or are you just another voice in a crowded marketplace, saying the same things your competitors are saying, using techniques that worked when your prospects’ parents were making buying decisions?

Think about the last sale you lost. Really think about it. Why did you lose it? If your answer is “price” or “they went with a competitor” or anything that suggests the buyer made their decision without significant input from you, then you were irrelevant in that process.

That should terrify you.

The Obsolete Advice Problem

Here’s what really gets me: I see sales trainers pushing techniques that were marginal twenty years ago and are obsolete now, but they call them “tried and true.”

Cold email blasts to prospects who delete them without reading. Voicemail scripts that sound like they were written in 1995. Presentation formats that ignore how modern buyers actually consume information. Closing techniques that assume buyers have no other options.

These aren’t “proven methods.” They’re museum pieces.

The trainers pushing this stuff aren’t staying current. They’re not adapting to how buyers have changed. They’re not acknowledging that what worked on Baby Boomer buyers often backfires spectacularly with younger decision makers.

And salespeople keep following this advice because it’s easier than admitting that everything they learned needs to be updated.

The New Relevance Imperative

Ten years ago, staying relevant was important for long-term success. Today, it’s a matter of immediate survival.

Your prospects can buy from Amazon. They can research solutions on their own. They can compare vendors without ever talking to a salesperson. In this environment, you don’t automatically get a seat at the table – you have to earn it by proving you bring value that they can’t get anywhere else.

That value isn’t product knowledge anymore. Your prospects can Google that. It’s not company information – that’s on your website. The value you bring is insight, perspective, and the ability to help them think through complex decisions in ways they haven’t considered.

But only if you’re current. Only if you understand their world. Only if you’re relevant.

Five Steps to Staying Relevant (Updated for 2025)

The five steps I outlined ten years ago still apply, but they need some serious updating:

1. Recognize that what got you here definitely won’t get you there. This was true ten years ago. It’s absolutely critical today. The sales techniques that worked even five years ago might be actively hurting you now. If you’re not constantly questioning your approach, you’re falling behind.
2. Constantly update your knowledge – and I mean constantly. Ten years ago, I suggested staying aware of resources available to customers. Today, that’s table stakes. You need to understand not just what’s available, but how your prospects prefer to research, evaluate, and buy. You need to know what AI tools they’re using, what social platforms they trust, and how their decision-making processes have evolved.
3. Make good decisions about new technology. This one’s gotten exponentially more important. AI, sales automation, social selling platforms – there’s more new technology available to salespeople than ever before. You can’t adopt everything, but you can’t ignore everything either. The salespeople who make smart technology choices will have massive advantages over those who don’t.
4. Commit to personal and professional growth. This might be even more important than I thought ten years ago. The pace of change has accelerated. If you’re not growing, you’re not just standing still – you’re moving backwards relative to the market.
5. Invest in staying current. This is where I see most salespeople fail. They want to stay relevant, but they don’t want to invest the time and money required. You need to read, attend conferences, take courses, experiment with new approaches. Yes, it’s expensive. Being irrelevant is more expensive.

The Bottom Line (Updated)

Ten years ago, I wrote that staying relevant was “neither easy nor cheap.” Today, I’d add that it’s also not optional.

The salespeople who embrace continuous learning, who adapt to changing buyer preferences, who leverage new technology thoughtfully, and who constantly evolve their approach – those salespeople will thrive.

The ones who cling to “tried and true” methods that stopped working years ago? They’ll join the growing ranks of the irrelevant, wondering why their phone stopped ringing and their pipeline dried up.

Your place in the business world can go away without you knowing it. That was true ten years ago, and it’s even more true today.

The choice is yours: Evolve or become extinct. There’s no middle ground anymore.

First of all, if you’re tired of hearing about adapting to change, I sincerely apologize. But it seems to me that too many salespeople still can’t figure out what to do when the ground shifts beneath their feet – and brother, the ground is shifting faster than ever.

Let me tell you what I mean. When ChatGPT first came out, I’ll be honest – I resisted it for months. Here I was, preaching adaptation, and I was acting like that old-school salesperson griping about “kids these days” and their fancy technology. Sound familiar? But then I started using it, discovered tools like Claude, and realized I had two choices: evolve or become irrelevant.

That’s when it hit me. This isn’t just about AI. It’s about everything. The salespeople getting left behind aren’t just struggling with technology – they’re the same ones bitching about younger buyers having different needs, complaining that Gen Z prospects don’t respond to cold calls the way Boomers did, or refusing to change their recruiting methods to attract younger talent to their teams.

You know what separates the winners from the losers? Three words that still ring as true today as they did when I learned them: “Adapt, Improvise, Overcome.”  Full disclosure, I learned it watching one of my favorite Clint Eastwood movies – “Heartbreak Ridge,” about a craggy old Marine in Grenada.  And if it works for Marines facing life-or-death situations, it damn sure works for salespeople facing market disruption.

But what does it mean in today’s world?

Adapt: The dictionary definition is still “to become adjusted to new conditions,” but the conditions are changing at warp speed. Your 25-year-old prospects aren’t going to sit through your 90-minute presentation, complete with a 50-slide PowerPoint deck. They’ve researched you online before you even know they exist. They want video demos, they text instead of call, and they make buying decisions differently than their predecessors.

Here’s the thing – you can either adapt to this reality or watch your pipeline dry up. If your traditional prospecting methods aren’t working, try something new. If LinkedIn outreach is getting better response than cold calling, then guess what? It’s time to master LinkedIn. If your younger prospects prefer Zoom calls to in-person meetings, become a Zoom expert. Or Teams, or WebEx, or whatever THEY prefer.

The biggest mistake I see? Salespeople waiting for the market to come back to them. It’s not coming back. The market moved on, and you’d better catch up.

Improvise: Sometimes the perfect solution isn’t in your playbook – especially when the playbook itself is outdated. That’s when improvisation saves the day. Think MacGyver as a salesperson, but instead of defusing bombs, you’re navigating a landscape where AI is screening your emails and 29-year-old decision-makers are ghosting your voicemails.

I didn’t have an AI strategy manual when ChatGPT launched. Neither did you. But the winners figured it out as they went, using the tools at hand. They started experimenting, testing, learning. They didn’t wait for corporate to roll out the official AI policy – they started using AI to write better emails, research prospects more thoroughly, and prepare for meetings more effectively – even using AI to role-play the sales call (yep, it can be done).

Forget not having the perfect CRM integration or the latest sales enablement platform.  As my friend Darren LaCroix likes to say, “Done is more profitable than perfect.” What can you do right now, with what you have, to connect with today’s buyers? The answer is probably sitting right in your pocket – your smartphone has more capability than entire sales departments had twenty years ago.

Overcome: This is where the rubber meets the road. To overcome means to succeed in dealing with obstacles, to prevail no matter what stands in your way. But here’s what’s different now – the obstacles aren’t just individual competitors or difficult prospects. The obstacles are seismic shifts in how business gets done.

Some salespeople see AI as a threat that’s going to replace them. Others see it as a tool that makes them more effective. Some see generational differences as insurmountable barriers. Others see them as opportunities to connect in new ways. The obstacle isn’t the change itself – it’s your attitude toward it.

Right now, I talk to salespeople every day who are stuck in 2019. They’re waiting for things to “get back to normal,” complaining about remote selling, griping about how prospects don’t respect salespeople anymore. Meanwhile, their competitors are leveraging AI to identify better prospects, using video messaging to stand out in crowded inboxes, and building relationships with younger buyers on their terms.

Don’t be one of the ones left behind. When you hit an obstacle – whether it’s a new technology, a generational gap, or a complete disruption of your industry – think of the Marines. Or think of that salesperson who figured out how to use AI while you were still resisting it.

Then find a way. Because that’s what professional salespeople do. And in a world changing this fast, it’s what professional salespeople must do to survive.

This week, I had to change the faucet cartridge in my shower.  Now, I’m a pretty skilled amateur mechanic, and I have more tools than most non-professional mechanics.  But I’m not a plumber and I had no idea how to do this.  Heck, I didn’t even know that a single handle faucet HAD a cartridge, and that’s what caused the drip I was seeing.  But, I knew what I didn’t know, so I did what people do nowadays.  I went to YouTube.  And I searched “how to fix leaky Delta shower faucet.”

I learned about the cartridge.  I learned that Delta faucets have the most expensive cartridges, and by far the most expensive cartridge removal tools (a tool I didn’t know existed).  And a couple of videos in, I learned a method to pull the cartridge even when you don’t have the tool.  So, I tackled the job, and about 45 minutes later, I had a leak-free faucet.  I was pretty happy – but then, the next day, I had a conversation that really irritated me.

This salesperson was a guy who was fairly new into our profession.  By his own admission, there was a lot that he didn’t know about selling, and those things that he didn’t know were causing him a lot of challenges.  Fair enough – many of us have that issue.  So I asked him one of my favorite questions that I ask of salespeople:

“What’s the best sales book you’ve ever read?”

Here’s the thing – there’s no wrong answer to that question. I’m not fishing for compliments.  Yeah, I like it if they’ve read my book, Sell Like You Mean it.  But more than that, I’m looking for insight into how they develop their skills, and perhaps a window into their sales philosophy.  All too often, the answer I get is the answer this guy gave me:

“I haven’t read any sales books.”

Wow.  I’m in disbelief about how many professional salespeople have never dropped $20 on a book to teach them how to develop the skills to make a living.  I’ve told this story before, but when I started my sales career at Laird Noller Ford in 1990, I read books on how to sell – and I wasn’t the only one.  There were a few of us (probably about half of the new car sales staff) that bought and read books on how to sell, passed them around, and talked about them.  Some of those books might have been awful (I still remember a couple of the car sales books that made me feel like I needed a shower), but we tried.  We were interested in building our skills and getting better, and we worked at doing that.

In fact, one of those books that I bought 35 years ago, Carl Sewell’s Customers For Life, is on my bookshelf to this very day.  It’s still a damn good book.  Some of it might be dated, but you have a hard time driving more than a few miles in Dallas without seeing a Sewell dealership, so it must have worked pretty well for Carl.  In fact, I just Googled him, and he’s still around (82 years old).

But understand this.  In 1990, there was no Google.  There was no YouTube.  There weren’t hundreds of blogs with thousands upon thousands of sales articles, and God knows how many thousands of videos on how to sell (I have over a hundred on my own YouTube channel, and frankly, I’m a slacker compared with a lot of people).  And all of that knowledge is available for free.

And yet, all too many salespeople don’t take advantage of it.  I’m not just talking about newbies – veterans need to keep polishing their skills, because buyers are changing and so are their demands upon salespeople.  Sales has changed more in the last five years than in the previous hundred.  You have to keep up.

I’ll be honest.  It’s almost offensive to me when salespeople don’t keep learning their profession.  I’ve been in sales for 35 years now.  27 years ago, I got my first job as a sales manager.  And I’m coming up on my 21^st anniversary as The Sales Navigator.  And you know what?  I’m still learning.  I’m an avid reader, video watcher, and conference attendee.  Back in April, I attended a conference for Speakers called “The Game Changers,” and one of the programs was an absolutely brilliant 45-minute session on LinkedIn by a guy named Richard Bliss. In two and a half weeks, I’ll hop on a plane for Vegas to spend two days in a LinkedIn program that he’s putting on.  Why?

Because there are things I don’t know that I want to know.  And those things could be crucial to my success.

If you’re not spending at least an hour a week on professional development, you’re falling behind.  You’re cheating yourself, your customers, and your employer.  Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to find that hour.  I get it.  But it’s harder to make up lost ground.

And the tools to learn are more prevalent than ever.  You’re reading one of those tools, and there are over 500 more articles on this blog that are designed to help.  Read me, read other people.  See what works for you.  And don’t be afraid to try new things.

I watched some videos, I tried something new, and now my faucet doesn’t leak.  Don’t let your career become a leaky faucet that never stops dripping.

“We need to do more prospecting.” That’s what the sales manager said in the Monday morning meeting. This was one of my coaching clients, and I was watching online as three of the salespeople nodded in agreement. Two others looked confused. And one salesperson spent the rest of the week making calls to existing customers, thinking he was “prospecting.”

Sound familiar? It should, because this scenario plays out in sales organizations every single day. We have a language problem in sales, and it’s costing us deals, wasting time, and creating confusion that could easily be avoided.  You can’t succeed at selling without a common language. Period. And yet, most sales teams operate like the Tower of Babel – everyone speaking their own version of “sales speak” and wondering why nothing gets done effectively. Your team might be one of them.

THE INTERVIEW QUESTION THAT ILLUSTRATES THIS

I’ve been interviewing salespeople for clients for years, and there’s one question I always ask: “Tell me about the most recent new customer you sold.” It’s one of my favorite questions, and I ask it to get an understanding of the salesperson’s prospecting habits (you should ask this one too).  You’d think this would be straightforward, right? Wrong.

More than half of the time, the candidate launches into a story about selling additional products or services to an existing customer. When I point out that wasn’t a new customer, they look at me like I’ve grown a second head. “But it was a new sale,” they protest.

No, it wasn’t. It was an upsell, a cross-sell, or an expansion – all valuable activities, but not new customer acquisition. The fact that experienced salespeople can’t distinguish between acquiring a new customer and selling more to an existing one tells you everything you need to know about our language problem.

The same confusion happens with “prospecting.” I ask salespeople about their prospecting activities, and they tell me about calling existing customers to check in or following up on quotes. That’s not prospecting – that’s account management or sales follow-up. Again, vitally important, but not prospecting.  Prospecting means finding and reaching out to potential new customers. The distinction matters because these activities require different skills, different messaging, and different metrics.

IT’S NOT JUST SALESPEOPLE, YOU’RE PROBABLY DOING IT TOO.

This language confusion isn’t limited to salespeople – it extends to sales management and even HR. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen job postings that confuse “job description” with “job advertisement.”

A job description is an internal HR document that outlines duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and reporting relationships. It’s a legal document used for performance management, compensation decisions, and compliance purposes. A job advertisement is an external marketing document designed to attract candidates and sell them on the opportunity.

When you use these terms interchangeably, you end up with job ads that read like compliance documents – dry, uninspiring, and focused on what the company wants rather than what the candidate gets – which, by the way, are most of the job ads I see. No wonder good salespeople don’t respond to your postings.

THE REAL COST OF LANGUAGE CONFUSION

This isn’t just semantic nitpicking. Language confusion has real business consequences:

Wasted effort. When your team doesn’t have clear definitions, people spend time on the wrong activities. The salesperson who thinks prospecting means calling existing customers isn’t actually prospecting – and your new customer acquisition suffers as a result.

Misaligned expectations. When managers and salespeople use different definitions for the same terms, performance discussions become exercises in frustration. How can you hold someone accountable for “more prospecting” if you define prospecting differently?

Poor measurement. You can’t effectively measure what you can’t clearly define. If half your team considers upselling to be “new sales” and half doesn’t, your metrics are meaningless.

Customer confusion. When salespeople use industry jargon without ensuring mutual understanding, they create confusion that can derail deals. I’ve seen deals lost because the salesperson assumed the customer understood terms like “implementation timeline” or “service level agreement” the same way they did.

THE INTERNAL SOLUTION

Step one is getting your own house in order. Sales teams need what I call a “common language charter” – a document that clearly defines key terms and ensures everyone uses them consistently.

Start with the basics. What exactly do you mean by:

• Prospect vs. lead vs. opportunity
• New customer vs. existing customer
• Prospecting vs. account management
• Sales cycle vs. buying process
• Close vs. commitment

Don’t assume these definitions are obvious. I’ve worked with teams where “qualified lead” meant something different to marketing than it did to sales, creating friction and finger-pointing when leads didn’t convert.

Make this a living document. Review it in team meetings. When someone uses a term differently than your agreed-upon definition, address it immediately. Consistency requires constant reinforcement.

And please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop using euphemisms. A rejection isn’t “feedback.” A discount isn’t an “investment in the relationship.” A desperate end-of-quarter push isn’t “creating urgency.” Call things what they are.

THE CUSTOMER LANGUAGE BARRIER

The internal language challenge is nothing compared to the external one. Every industry has its jargon, acronyms, and specialized terminology. Your customers use these terms, but they might define them differently than you do.

Here’s what great salespeople do: They confirm definitions, and get on the same page with their customers. When a prospect mentions their “procurement process,” don’t assume you know what that means. Ask. “When you say procurement process, walk me through what that typically looks like at your company.”

This isn’t about appearing ignorant – it’s about ensuring alignment. I’ve seen salespeople lose deals because they assumed “budget approved” meant what they thought it meant, only to discover the customer meant something entirely different.

The same applies to your own jargon. When you mention “implementation,” “onboarding,” or “service delivery,” make sure your customer understands what you mean. Better yet, adopt their language when possible. If they call it “rollout” instead of “implementation,” use their term.

Don’t lose a deal because you and your customer didn’t have a common understanding of the meanings of the words being used.

MAKING THE CHANGE

Fixing your language problem isn’t complicated, but it does require discipline:

Document your definitions. Create that common language charter I mentioned. Get everyone’s input, reach consensus, and put it in writing.

Train consistently. Don’t just hand out the document and hope for the best. Role-play scenarios where language confusion could occur. Practice confirming definitions with prospects.

Monitor and correct. In team meetings, coaching sessions, and deal reviews, listen for language inconsistencies and address them immediately.

Lead by example. If you’re a sales manager, your language needs to be impeccable. Your team will mirror your communication habits, good or bad.

Remember, words mean things and language shapes thinking. When your team has clear, consistent definitions, they think more clearly about their activities and objectives. When they confirm language with customers, they build better relationships and avoid costly misunderstandings.

The sales profession faces enough challenges without adding unnecessary confusion through sloppy language. We can’t control market conditions, but we can control how clearly we communicate.

Start today. Pick three terms your team uses regularly and make sure everyone defines them the same way. Then expand from there. Your results – and your sanity – will thank you.

After all, if we can’t even agree on what we’re talking about, how can we expect to succeed at selling it?

The rules of customer relationships have changed, and most salespeople are still playing by the old playbook. I’ve been watching this evolution for years, and frankly, it’s been fascinating – and a little painful – to see so many professionals struggle with what should be a fundamental part of their business.

Here’s the thing: having customers and having customer relationships are two entirely different animals. Just because someone buys from you doesn’t mean you have a relationship with them. They might be what I call a “Transactional Buyer” – they purchase based purely on price or convenience. Or maybe they’re a “Habitual Buyer” – they buy from you simply because changing vendors feels like too much work. Neither of these scenarios represents a real relationship, and both leave you vulnerable to being replaced the moment a competitor makes a better offer.

But first, let’s talk about the elephant in the room – the generational shift that’s fundamentally changing how relationships are built in business today.

The Great Generational Flip

Here’s something that will change how you think about customer relationships: Millennials and Gen-Z – who now make up the largest portion of the workforce and decision-makers – build relationships completely opposite to how Boomers and Gen-X did it. And I mean 180 degrees opposite.

Boomers and X’ers? They built personal connections first, then moved into business. Think golf outings, long lunches, family photos on the desk, and “How about them Chiefs?” before getting down to brass tacks. The relationship was personal first, business second.

Millennials and Z’s flip this entirely. They’re business-first, then personal. They want to see your competence, your value, your results. They want to know you can deliver before they care about your weekend plans or your kid’s soccer game. Once you’ve proven yourself in business, then – and only then – will they open the door to personal connection.

This isn’t because they’re cold or antisocial. It’s because they’re efficient, skeptical of traditional sales approaches, and frankly, they’ve been sold to their entire lives. They want substance before relationship, proof before promises.

Understanding this shift is crucial because it changes how you approach every one of the five signals below. Let’s dive in.

1. You can make mistakes and still keep the business

There’s really no larger indicator that you have a real customer relationship than this one. Mistakes happen. That’s because people are imperfect – yes, even your humble author. In fact, I had such a meeting years ago where a particular service offering hadn’t gone as well as it could have. In the midst of the meeting, my client gave me the highest compliment they could: “Troy, regardless, we want you to continue to be involved here. You’ve been good for us and to us.”

Here’s the generational twist: With Millennials and Gen-Z, earning this forgiveness requires a different approach. Instead of relying on personal rapport to smooth things over, you need to lead with accountability and solutions. Own the mistake completely, present a concrete plan to fix it, and demonstrate how you’ll prevent it from happening again. The personal relationship that allows for forgiveness comes after you’ve proven you can handle problems professionally.

Mistakes happen. If one mistake costs you the business, you didn’t have a real relationship – regardless of which generation you’re dealing with.

2. They buy most of what they need from you

This is actually a bit of a revision from my contention of the past. I used to say that you have a maximized customer relationship if they bought everything from you that they could buy. I’ve backed off that to a certain extent. Today, I like to see at least a 75% wallet share as a maximized relationship, simply because customers like to diversify – few buyers these days are willing to put all their eggs in one basket, no matter how good you are.

With younger decision-makers, achieving this 75% share requires consistently demonstrating value and innovation. They’re not buying from you out of loyalty or because they like you personally – they’re buying because you consistently deliver results that matter to their business. This generation is quick to pivot if someone else can deliver better outcomes.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t always be shooting for 100% wallet share – you should – but it does recognize that sometimes it just isn’t possible, especially with buyers who prioritize diversification as a risk management strategy.

3. You have multiple contacts

This is more important now than ever, and the generational shift makes it even more critical. Good customer relationships require multiple contacts. The reason is simple – employees are more mobile than ever, and stints at jobs get shorter and shorter. If you put all your relationship eggs in one basket by having a single contact, that means when your contact changes jobs, you’re back to square one.

Here’s what’s different with Millennials and Gen-Z: Building multiple contacts requires proving your value to each person individually. You can’t rely on one champion to vouch for you personally with their colleagues. Each contact wants to see direct evidence of your competence and results.

In building your relationships, go High, Wide, and Deep. “High” means as high on the company organization chart as you can get. “Wide” means many contacts. And “Deep” means that your contacts understand the concrete value you bring to their business – not just that they like you as a person.

4. They give you referrals

Referrals are one of the greatest indicators of a maximized customer relationship. A referral is an expression of trust. When your customer refers you, they are saying that they trust you so much that they are willing to place their other relationships in your hands.

With the business-first generations, referrals come when you’ve consistently delivered measurable results. They’re not referring you because you’re a great person to grab drinks with – they’re referring you because you’ve made them look good to their boss, helped them hit their numbers, or solved problems that mattered to their business.

It’s also an expression that your customer cares about your continued prosperity, but this caring is earned through performance, not personal connection. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – your best customers want you to prosper, but with Millennials and Gen-Z, they want you to prosper because your success drives their success.

5. They evangelize for you

What I mean by “evangelize” is that they are willing to give testimonials and serve as a reference when necessary. One of the toughest parts of selling a new customer is offering proof that your promises aren’t just empty words. Testimonials do this – they allow new customers to see you through the eyes of happy current customers.

The generational difference here is significant. Millennials and Gen-Z will evangelize for you, but their testimonials focus on specific, measurable outcomes rather than personal attributes. They’ll say, “Troy helped us increase efficiency by 23% and reduce costs by $50K annually” rather than “Troy is a great guy who really cares about our business.”

This is actually more powerful for your sales efforts because it gives prospects concrete evidence of the value you deliver.

The Strategic Approach

When you evaluate your customer relationships, think of the above five touchpoints while keeping the generational shift in mind. Chances are that most of your relationships won’t measure up – and that’s okay. It gives you something to work toward.

Get strategic. With each of your key customers, identify which generation they belong to and adjust your approach accordingly. For Millennial and Gen-Z customers, pick one of the above signals where you are deficient and work toward improving it by focusing on business value first. Demonstrate competence, deliver results, solve problems – and then let the personal connection develop naturally.

For each call, have a clear business objective that moves you toward one of these signals. When one signal is achieved, work on the next. You’ll likely find that one signal leads to another – the customer who will give you a results-based testimonial will also likely give referrals and tolerate mistakes because they trust your ability to deliver.

Make no mistake – a Maximized customer relationship is money, regardless of which generation you’re building it with. The path to get there has just evolved with the times.