I flew United last week for the first time in ten years. I gave them another shot because they fit my schedule better than Southwest or Delta.

The flight itself was fine. The crew was competent, we had an on-time departure and arrival, and no issues once I was on the plane. United did the basic job of getting me from Point A to Point B without incident. But I won’t be flying them again for another decade, and it has nothing to do with the flight.

One Moment That Cost Them a Customer

I bought an upgraded seat with extra legroom – the section right behind first class. I figured that would get me earlier boarding so I wouldn’t have to check my carry-on, but I was wrong. I boarded near the very end and had to check my bag anyway.

I asked the gate agent, politely, how I bought an upgraded seat and still boarded near last.

His response, in a rude tone: “Well, if you flew with us from time to time, you’d already know that.”

He proceeded to explain that aisle seats board last, but I could have paid extra on top of my upgraded seat for earlier boarding. At that point, I didn’t care about the explanation because that one comment erased any goodwill that might have come from a competent flight.

This isn’t a rant about one rude gate agent – this is about what happens when companies have power and customers don’t, and why that power never lasts as long as companies think it will.

Your Power Imbalance is Never Permanent

Once you’re at the gate, you’re trapped and they know it. You either board the plane or you don’t fly, and that power imbalance reveals what a company’s culture actually values. United’s culture clearly values compliance over service.

United’s gate agent talked to me that way because he could, and he knows I can’t do anything about it once I’m at the gate. But here’s what United – and every other company that treats customers with contempt – doesn’t understand: When your customers don’t like the way you do business, you will eventually have no customers. It might take a while, but someone always disrupts the business model that depends on captive customers.

For decades, the airline industry operated on the assumption that customers had limited choices and would tolerate being treated poorly. Then Southwest Airlines came along and built an entire business model around being the anti-airline, with friendly employees, no change fees, transparent pricing, and free checked bags. They treated customers like human beings instead of inconveniences, and they disrupted an entire industry.

Southwest became so successful that they dominated domestic air travel for years, and then in one of the most spectacular unforced errors in business history, they decided to become like everyone else. They’re implementing assigned seating, adding fees, and eroding the cultural differences that made them Southwest.

Someone will disrupt them too. Maybe it already exists and we just don’t see it yet, but it’s coming because the fundamental truth hasn’t changed: anytime your customers don’t like the way you do business, someone is working right now to give them an alternative.

What This Has to Do With Your Business

You’re probably not in the airline industry, and you’re not United or Southwest, but the principle applies to every B2B business and it’s actually more dangerous for you than it is for United.

United is big enough that losing me as a customer doesn’t matter to them because they have millions of other customers and massive economies of scale. Your business isn’t United, and in B2B sales, you don’t get away with treating customers like an inconvenience. Your customer base is small enough that every relationship matters, which means one sales rep talking down to a client, one entitled attitude from a service manager, or one “if you did business with us more, you’d know” comment has just cost you years of revenue.

And unlike airlines, your customers probably do have alternatives. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but they’re looking, and when they find one, they’ll leave without coming back.

Your Culture Comes Out When Customers Have No Leverage

I’ve flown Southwest and Delta hundreds of times over the years, and their employees are pleasant, they act like they’re happy you’re there, and if you ask a question, they answer it without condescension. The difference isn’t the employee manual or the training program – the difference is what happens when customers have no leverage.

When your customers are trapped at the gate, locked into a contract, or dependent on your service with no easy alternative, that’s when you find out what your culture really is. Is it service, or is it just compliance dressed up as service?

United’s gate agent revealed United’s real culture – not the marketing version or the mission statement on the website, but the actual culture that shows up when an employee knows the customer has no power.

Here’s the uncomfortable question for your business: When your customers have no other options, how does your team treat them?

Your Customers Are Talking – Are You Listening?

United probably has no idea they lost me as a customer yesterday because one passenger out of millions is statistically irrelevant. But I’m telling this story to everyone who will listen, and thousands of people will read this. Some of them fly United regularly and are nodding along because they’ve experienced the same thing.

Your customers are doing the same thing about your business. When they have a bad experience, they’re not necessarily telling you – they’re telling their peers, posting in online communities, and quietly shopping alternatives. You won’t know about it until the renewal doesn’t happen or the deal you thought was locked up goes to a competitor.

The signals are always there if you’re paying attention. Customers who used to engage regularly go quiet, response times to your emails get longer, and they start asking more questions about contract terms and exit clauses. These are customers who don’t like the way you do business but haven’t found their alternative yet – eventually, they will.

Disruption Comes From Where You’re Not Looking

United isn’t worried about me as a customer because they’re worried about other major airlines – they watch Delta and American and Southwest, tracking market share and route profitability.

What they’re not tracking is the accumulation of customers like me who are just done, who would rather drive six hours than fly United, and who will pay more to fly a competitor. Individually, none of those customers matter, but collectively, they’re the foundation of disruption.

In your market, the disruption probably won’t come from your biggest competitor. It’ll come from a smaller company that’s treating customers the way you used to when you were hungry, or from a startup that’s built their entire model around solving the frustrations your industry has normalized.

By the time you notice, it’s too late because they didn’t just take one customer – they took everyone who was quietly dissatisfied and waiting for an alternative.

Being Competent Isn’t Enough Anymore

United did the flight competently with on-time departure and arrival, no safety issues, and no lost bags. By the metrics United probably cares about, it was a successful flight, but competent execution doesn’t matter when your people treat customers with contempt. I don’t care that the plane left on time – I care that your employee made me feel stupid for asking a reasonable question about a product I paid for.

Your business is the same. You can deliver the product on time, hit your SLAs, and meet the contract terms, but if your service manager talks down to customers, your salesperson ghosts them after the deal closes, or your support team makes them feel like an inconvenience, you’ve failed the only test that actually matters.

Customers don’t leave because you missed a deadline – they leave because you made them feel like their business doesn’t matter to you.

How to Fix This in Your Company

If you’re reading this and thinking “we would never treat customers that way,” you’re probably right consciously and deliberately. But what happens when customers are locked into contracts and can’t easily leave? What happens when your team is stressed and a customer asks a question that seems obvious to you?

That’s when culture shows up – not the culture you think you have, but the culture you actually have.

Start paying attention to the moments when customers have no leverage. How does your renewal process work? How do your people handle service calls from customers who can’t cancel mid-contract? How do you respond when a customer asks a question that your team thinks they should already know the answer to?

Those moments are expensive to ignore because eventually, someone will build their entire business around treating those customers better than you do.

Navigating Your Customer’s Experience

United will be fine without me because they’re big enough that one customer walking away doesn’t matter. Your business isn’t United, which means every customer matters, every interaction matters, and every moment when a customer has no power is a test of whether your culture is real or just performance.

The companies that win long-term aren’t the ones with the best product or the lowest price – they’re the ones whose people treat customers like they’re happy they exist, especially when the customer is trapped and has no other options.

Because eventually, they will have options. Someone is working on it right now.

Make sure they don’t have a reason to take them.

Make Sure to Register For My Webinar on May 28:  It’s Not Your Salespeople: The Four Layers That Determine Whether Your Sales Organization Performs.

There’s a phrase I’ve been using lately: “aggressive transparency.” I’m not sure anyone else is using it. Maybe I coined it. Either way, it’s a philosophy that more companies need to embrace – especially in B2B sales where trust has become the scarcest resource in the market. Here’s what aggressive transparency means: Being so transparent about information that your competitors play close to the vest that it becomes an attack on them without actually attacking them.

Things like pricing, contract terms, fee structures, implementation timelines, and deliverables. The things most companies hide behind “contact us for pricing” and lengthy sales processes – put them out there publicly, clearly, and confidently. When you do this right, you’re not just being honest. You’re weaponizing honesty against competitors who aren’t.

How Trust Happens in 2026

Here’s the underlying principle: Any information about pricing, terms, or contracts that you volunteer openly generates trust. Any information of that type that customers have to research and discover through back-door methods arouses skepticism and suspicion.

My research backs this up. According to a 2022 study in the Journal of Business Ethics, 70% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a company that offers clear and straightforward pricing models. And the impact goes beyond initial purchase – clear pricing policies lead to a 15% increase in repeat purchases.

Here’s where it gets really interesting: 61% of individuals reported abandoning a purchase due to unclear pricing structures. You’re not just building trust with transparency. You’re avoiding the massive conversion losses that come from opacity.

What that means is that more than half of your potential buyers will walk away if they can’t figure out what you actually charge. Not because the price is too high. Because the pricing is unclear.  We’ve been marinated in “your price is too high” for most of our professional lives – but now the real issue is, “I can’t find and figure out your price.”  It’s a new ballgame, gang.

The Amazon Effect is Real

We live in the age of Amazon. Pricing isn’t expected to be secret anymore. The information needed to buy – specifications, pricing, terms, delivery times – is expected to be available instantly. This has fundamentally changed what salespeople are supposed to provide, especially early in the Buyer’s Journey. You’re not the gatekeeper of basic information anymore. You’re not parsing out details strategically to move buyers through your sales process.

You provide insights and investigation. You help buyers understand implications they haven’t considered. You ask questions that help them define their needs correctly. You bring expertise that can’t be Googled. But the basic “necessary to buy” information? That should be public, clear, and accessible.

Companies that understand this are winning. Research from Simon-Kucher & Partners reveals that 70% of U.S. consumers are frustrated by hidden fees and complex pricing structures. And that frustration has consequences: according to a study by the Harvard Business Review, businesses that prioritize transparency can boost customer retention rates by up to 15%.

How to Implement Aggressive Transparency

So what does this actually mean in practice?

Post your pricing. Not “contact us for a quote.” Not “starting at…” Real, actual pricing structures. If your pricing varies by volume or configuration, show the matrix. If you have different service tiers, show what each one costs and what’s included.

Yes, your competitors will see it. Good. Let them. Because your prospects will see it too, and they’ll trust you more than competitors who hide it.

Post your contract terms. Not the full legal document with forty pages of boilerplate. A clear, straightforward summary of what customers are agreeing to. How long is the contract? What are the termination terms? What happens if they want to scale up or down?  And don’t hide the important stuff in gray 8-point type.  If there’s a term you can’t be proud of, why do you have it?

Show a sample invoice. Let prospects see exactly what billing looks like before they sign anything. What line items will they see? How are things calculated? What fees might appear?

Be clear about what’s included and what costs extra. Don’t make customers discover through experience that the thing they thought was included actually costs $500/month extra.

Companies that openly share their pricing details on websites and during customer interactions see a 30% increase in perceived value among consumers. That’s not just trust – that’s customers perceiving your offering as more valuable because they can actually understand what they’re getting.  You’re justifying a higher price simply by publishing it.

Why This Is A Competitive Advantage

Here’s why this is aggressive rather than just transparent: When you’re the only company in your market doing this, you make every competitor look like they’re hiding something.

Because they are.

When a prospect talks to you and can see everything clearly on your website, then talks to your competitor who says “we’ll need to have a conversation about your specific needs before we can discuss pricing,” you’ve created a stark contrast.

One company is confident enough in their value to publish pricing. The other isn’t.

One company makes it easy to understand what you’re buying. The other makes you work for it. (Hint – prospects don’t like to be the ones doing the work.)

One company treats prospects like adults who can evaluate options. The other treats them like marks who need to be managed through a sales process.

Transparency brings trust. 76% of consumers equate transparent pricing with ethical practices. You’re not just competing on price or features. You’re competing on perceived ethics and trustworthiness.  You’re probably already trying to do so by demonstrating trust and ethics through platitudes – do it through actions.

And here’s the kicker: brands known for transparent pricing can enjoy a significant boost in customer loyalty and retention, with loyal customers being 70% more likely to recommend the brand to others.

The Objections

I know what you’re thinking.

“If we post our pricing, competitors will undercut us.”

Maybe. But if the only way you can compete is by hiding your pricing until you’re deep into the sales process, you have a different problem. And customers who choose solely on price were never going to be loyal customers anyway.  You never truly “win” a deal with the lowest price.

“Our pricing is complex and depends on too many variables.”

Then simplify it. Or show the ranges. Or provide a calculator. Because if your pricing is too complex for you to explain publicly, it’s definitely too complex for customers to understand – which means you’re losing deals to the 61% of people who abandon purchases due to unclear pricing.  My friend Isaac Miranda has placed a configurator on the front page of his website, and it’s a great strategy.

“We’ll lose negotiating leverage.”

You might. Or you might gain trust-based leverage instead. The ability to say “here’s our pricing, it’s the same for everyone, and here’s exactly why it’s worth it” can be more powerful than negotiating leverage that customers resent.  And – the younger the buyer, the less they enjoy negotiating.  73% of those with buying authority in the B2B world are Millennials and Gen-Z.  Millennials don’t care for negotiating, and Gen-Z doesn’t really have any interest in it at all.

The Modern Buyer Expects It

Modern B2B buyers do extensive research before they ever contact you. 82% of shoppers conduct online research before making purchases. They’re comparing options, reading reviews, and trying to understand what they’re actually going to pay.

If that information isn’t on your website, they’re either finding it somewhere less flattering (like customer complaints about hidden fees), or they’re moving on to competitors who make it easier.

Aggressive transparency doesn’t just build trust. It reduces friction in your sales process, accelerates decision-making, and attracts the kind of customers who value clarity over confusion.

Navigating Aggressive Transparency

Start with pricing. Even if you can’t publish exact numbers, you can publish ranges, typical configurations, or pricing methodology.

Add contract term summaries. One page that explains what customers are agreeing to in plain language.

Show what billing actually looks like. A sample invoice goes a long way toward reducing anxiety about hidden fees.

Be clear about what’s standard and what costs extra. Don’t make customers discover this through experience.

Will this feel uncomfortable? Probably.  Change is always uncomfortable, and most companies have spent decades hiding this information strategically.

But clear cost structures can lead to a 50% increase in conversion rates. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a competitive advantage.

Your competitors aren’t doing this. They’re still playing the old game where controlling information equals controlling the sale. Be aggressively transparent instead. Make them look like they’re hiding something.

Because they are.

I’m deep into writing a new book called “The Navigator’s Chart,” and it’s forcing me to crystallize everything I’ve learned about professional selling over thirty years into frameworks that actually help salespeople succeed in the modern buying environment.

One of the core pieces I’m working on is what I call the Elements of Selling – five foundational principles that underpin all effective modern sales approaches. These aren’t tactics or techniques that change with technology or buyer preferences. They’re bedrock principles that can be internalized and expressed authentically by any salesperson, selling anything, in any B2B environment.

I want to start sharing some of these concepts with you over the next few months as the book takes shape. Today, let’s talk about the Elements.

Why “Elements”?

The word is deliberate. Elements are basic. Foundational. Essential in the same way that the elements of matter are essential – not decorative add-ons or advanced techniques for experienced practitioners, but the bedrock from which everything else is built.

A salesperson who has genuinely internalized these principles has a foundation that will serve them for their entire career, regardless of how specific tactics, channels, and technologies change around them.The Elements aren’t a checklist of behaviors. They’re a way of orienting toward the buyer. And that orientation is the foundation on which all effective modern selling is built.

Element One: Sales Is Always Changing

The techniques that worked last year may not work as well this year. The buyers making decisions today have different expectations, different communication preferences, and a different relationship to information than the buyers of a decade ago. The salesperson who stopped learning when they found something that worked has already begun to fall behind, whether they know it or not.

This isn’t abstract. The information asymmetry that made traditional closing techniques effective is gone. The generational shift in B2B purchasing authority is ongoing. The digital research behaviors that compressed the buyer’s visible engagement with salespeople continue to evolving.

The most dangerous moment in a salesperson’s career is when they become convinced they know how to sell and stop paying attention to what’s changing around them. I was reminded of this at a conference a couple years ago. A trainer was presenting a prospecting program I’d seen him deliver more than twenty years earlier. Back then, he’d spent half his time talking about how to get past “Gladys” – the gatekeeping secretary who stood between the salesperson and the decision-maker.

At the time, it was relevant. But Gladys has been downsized, replaced by autoattendants and direct-dial extensions. I was curious to see how he’d updated the program.

He hadn’t. Same speech. Same Gladys. Same exact material, delivered twenty years later into a world that had moved completely past the problem he was solving. He’s retired. He just hasn’t announced it yet.

Element Two: You Cannot Control the Customer

The modern buyer has options, has information, and has a well-developed instinct for recognizing when someone is trying to manage them. Attempting to control them produces exactly the result that control-oriented training was supposed to prevent: resistance, disengagement, and departure.

What you can control is yourself: your preparation, your process, your questions, your presence, and your integrity. A salesperson who shows up genuinely prepared – who has researched the buyer’s business, understands their industry context, and comes with questions worth asking – has already differentiated themselves from competitors who arrive with a pitch deck and a script.

Here’s something I’ve observed across thousands of sales interactions: a great Investigation reduces objections. When a salesperson conducts genuine, thorough Investigation, the concerns and issues the buyer has are surfaced and discussed during Investigation and Solution – before the buyer is ever asked to make a decision. Objections typically emerge at the Decision phase, but they originate in earlier phases where the buyer’s questions were never asked and concerns were never surfaced.

When objections do arise, treat them as information rather than resistance. The salesperson who has a rebuttal prepared for every anticipated concern is treating the buyer as an obstacle rather than a partner. The rebuttal may win the argument. It rarely wins the sale, and it never wins the relationship.

Influence beats control every time. And twice on Sunday.

Element Three: Win the Relationship

Win the relationship, not just the account. The distinction matters because it determines where your attention goes: toward the transaction or toward the person.

Let me be specific about what “relationship” means in modern B2B. It doesn’t mean golf outings and knowing their kids’ birthdays – though genuine personal connection isn’t without value. The modern buyer – particularly the Millennial and Gen Z buyer who now dominates purchasing authority – doesn’t build loyalty on social connection. They build it on professional value.

Are you genuinely useful to their business? Do you understand their situation well enough to give them advice they can trust? Are you honest when honesty doesn’t serve your immediate sale? That’s what “winning the relationship” means today. Customer acquisition is expensive. Customer retention is profitable. A customer who stays for five years and refers two colleagues is worth many times what the initial contract represented.

Winning the relationship also requires willingness to be honest when honesty doesn’t serve the immediate sale. The customer who is about to buy something that won’t solve their problem needs to hear that, even if it costs the transaction. I’ve told customers I couldn’t help them, that my solution wasn’t the right fit, that they should talk to a competitor. Every time, the customer remembered it. Some came back when their situation changed. Some referred people to me. None ever felt I’d failed them.

The willingness to lose a sale to serve a customer’s genuine interest is one of the most powerful trust-building tools available.

Element Four: Curiosity Is the Primary Sales Skill

Not charisma. Not closing technique. Not product knowledge. Not persistence.

Curiosity. The genuine desire to understand the buyer’s world – their business, their challenges, their priorities, their definition of success – before proposing anything.

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. Investigation requires asking questions that help the buyer think more clearly about their situation – questions that surface needs they hadn’t fully articulated, implications they hadn’t fully considered, priorities they hadn’t fully ranked.

None of that is possible without genuine curiosity.

A salesperson executing a prescribed question sequence isn’t being curious – they’re running a script. Genuine curiosity produces a different kind of conversation, one where the salesperson’s next question depends on what the buyer just said. Good questions are open-ended. Good questions drill down. Good questions surface implications. And good questions demonstrate understanding.

Here’s the discipline: stay in the conversation rather than in your head. The moment you start thinking about what you’re going to say next, you’ve stopped listening.

Element Five: Prospecting Requires Integration

Neither social media alone nor conventional outreach alone is sufficient in the current environment.

Conventional telephone prospecting has become significantly less productive. Where a salesperson could once reasonably expect contact on roughly one in every three or four dials, the current ratio in most B2B environments is closer to one in ten. At the same time, social media prospecting has become more sophisticated and necessary, but it remains less predictable than conventional outreach.

The modern prospecting reality requires deliberate integration of both.

A well-crafted voicemail no longer carries a straight line to an appointment – but it’s not wasted effort. A compelling voicemail humanizes the salesperson, establishes a name and reason for the call, and creates context that makes a subsequent LinkedIn connection feel familiar rather than cold. My observation is that a well-done voicemail results in the prospect looking the salesperson up on LinkedIn at a rate of roughly 20 to 25 percent – even when there’s no direct response to the call.

The phone call and the social presence aren’t competing channels. They’re reinforcing ones.

The enduring principle: active prospecting is the only reliable mechanism for pipeline development that the salesperson can actually control. The salesperson who maintains an active, systematic outreach practice – using phone, email, LinkedIn, and referral as complementary channels rather than alternatives – retains control over pipeline development.

Navigating the Elements

These five Elements aren’t independent. They reinforce each other.

Sales is always changing creates the obligation to keep learning. You cannot control the customer directs attention toward inputs you can influence rather than outputs you can’t. Win the relationship extends your time horizon from the transaction to the lifetime of the customer relationship. Curiosity provides the mechanism through which Investigation is conducted well. And prospecting requires integration ensures the pipeline doesn’t atrophy while you focus on conversation quality.

Together, they describe a salesperson who is always learning, who focuses on what they can control, who is oriented toward the buyer’s success, who conducts genuine investigations, and who maintains an active prospecting practice. That’s not a script. It’s a professional orientation.

A salesperson who has genuinely built their practice around these principles will find that the specific tactics required by any given situation are easier to figure out – because the principles provide a stable foundation from which to navigate. The methodologies will keep changing. The tactics will keep evolving. The channels will keep shifting.

The Elements won’t.

Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing more pieces from “The Navigator’s Chart” as the book takes shape. These are the foundational concepts I believe every professional salesperson needs to internalize – not to memorize, but to truly understand and make their own.

Because that’s what separates salespeople who build careers from salespeople who just have jobs.

I had a video call with a vendor last week, and within the first 30 seconds, I knew this wasn’t going to go well. The salesperson was sitting in what appeared to be his hotel room, wearing a hoodie, with an unmade bed visible in the background. When I asked him what he wanted to discuss, he said, “I just wanted to touch base and see how things were going.”

No agenda. No preparation. No reason for me to invest my time. I ended the call after five minutes, and I guarantee he logged it in his CRM as a “customer contact.” What he actually did was waste both of our time and ensure I’ll never take another call from him. This isn’t an isolated incident. I see salespeople diminish their own importance every single day, and many of them don’t even realize they’re doing it.

The Generational Disconnect on Professionalism

Here’s where things get interesting: There’s a massive generational divide on what constitutes “professional” in sales. Many younger salespeople have been told that formality is outdated, that “authenticity” means being casual, and that Millennial and Gen-Z buyers prefer a relaxed approach.

That’s partially true, and it’s also dangerously misleading.

Yes, younger buyers are less formal than previous generations. But there’s a huge difference between “less formal” and “unprofessional.” Modern buyers value authenticity and genuine connection, but they also value competence, preparation, and respect for their time. Looking like you just rolled out of bed doesn’t communicate authenticity. It communicates that this meeting isn’t important to you – so why should it be important to them?

How Salespeople Kill Their Own Importance

Here are the most common ways I see salespeople undermining themselves:

1. Appearance – Yes, It Still Matters

When I started in sales, the philosophy was “dress one notch better than your customers.” I always had a jacket and tie available. I might remove them for certain calls, but I started with them. Today’s standard has dropped from “casual” to downright sloppy. When I bring this up, salespeople protest: “My customers wouldn’t like it if I dressed better!” Really? You’re positioning yourself as a business resource, but you think looking professional would offend them?

Here’s the updated standard: Dress in a way that shows this meeting matters to you. For most business settings, that means a well-pressed shirt and professional attire – whether you’re on video or in person. Show that you put thought into your appearance because you put thought into everything you do for this customer.  You’re not doing your laundry or slopping the hogs, you’re selling.

2. Going in Empty-Handed (or Screen-Sharing Nothing)

I’ve always carried a briefcase or at minimum a professional padfolio with relevant materials. Some salespeople say, “I don’t want to intimidate my customer with a briefcase.” That’s ridiculous. Your customer knows you’re a salesperson. Going in prepared with materials that facilitate the conversation isn’t intimidating – it’s professional.

The modern version of this is screen-sharing during video calls. If you’re going to share your screen, have something prepared to share. Don’t fumble through files trying to find something relevant while your prospect watches you search (ask me how I learned this one).

Use AI tools to help you prepare. Before a call, use Claude or similar tools to research the prospect’s industry, recent news about their company, and relevant trends. Have that information organized and ready to reference.

3. The Word “Just”

“I was just calling to check in…”

“I just wanted to see if…”

“Just” disempowers everything that comes after it. It signals that what you’re about to say isn’t really important. Stop using “just.” Be direct. “I’m calling because…” “I wanted to discuss…” Your time and your customer’s time are valuable. Communicate like you believe that.

4. The “Stop By” Instead of the Appointment

“Stopping by” is not professional selling. It’s hoping someone has time to talk to you because you didn’t plan well enough to schedule an appointment. An appointment is a commitment to meet at a specific time and place to discuss a specific topic. It shows respect for your time and theirs. It signals that something important is going to happen.

Stop-bys fill CRM stats. Appointments move the Buyer’s Journey forward.

5. Agenda-Free Sales Calls

Every sales call should have an objective. We covered this in a recent article, but it bears repeating: “I’m just checking in” is a waste of everyone’s time. Your customers are busy. A call with no purpose signals nothing important is happening. And if nothing important is happening, why should they take your future calls?

Before every call, ask yourself: What do I want to accomplish? Then prepare accordingly – and yes, use AI to help you research and prepare questions.

What Modern Professionalism Looks Like

Here’s what younger buyers actually want: They want salespeople who respect their time, come prepared with relevant information, and conduct themselves like professionals. They don’t care if you’re wearing a three-piece suit. But they do care if you look like this meeting matters to you.

They don’t need formal language. But they do need you to be clear and direct about why you’re there. They appreciate authenticity. But authenticity doesn’t mean unprepared or casual to the point of unprofessional.

The bar hasn’t been lowered – it’s shifted. Professional today means:

• Being prepared (use the tools available to you, including AI)
• Having a clear purpose for every interaction
• Respecting their time
• Looking like you take your role seriously
• Communicating with confidence, not apology

Why Salespeople Undermine Themselves

All of these behaviors – the sloppy appearance, the “just stopping by,” the agenda-free calls – have their root in shame about being a salesperson.  This is also the reason for wishy-washy job titles like “Business Development,” “Territory Manager,” and the like.

There’s no reason to be ashamed. Selling is a profession that’s both proud and incredibly important. Professional salespeople help customers make successful buying decisions. They provide expertise, insights, and solutions.

But only if they act like professionals.

Making Yourself Important

Ask yourself: What signals am I sending that my sales calls are important? And what signals am I sending that they’re not? Your appearance, your preparation, your language, your approach – all of these communicate whether this interaction matters.

Make it matter. Dress professionally. Come prepared. Have an agenda. Use the tools available to you – including AI – to do your homework before the call. Your prospects will notice the difference. And so will your results.

Because when you treat your sales calls as important, your customers will too.

“Sales is a numbers game.”

You’ve heard it a thousand times. Probably said it yourself. It’s become one of those accepted truths in sales that people repeat without thinking about what it actually means. And like most accepted truths, it’s only partially correct.

Yes, sales involves numbers. Yes, you need activity. But calling it a “numbers game” is dangerously incomplete thinking that leads salespeople to waste massive amounts of time on low-quality activity that produces mediocre results. Here’s the reality: Sales is an equation, not a game.  And here’s the equation:

Quantity of activity multiplied by quality of activity equals results.

Notice the word “multiplied.” That’s critical. It’s not addition – it’s multiplication. You can make a hundred prospecting calls, but if the quality of those calls is poor, you’re multiplying your effort by a fraction. A hundred calls times 0.2 quality gives you the equivalent of twenty good calls.

Conversely, if you make fifty calls with excellent execution, you’re multiplying by a higher number. Fifty calls times 0.8 quality gives you the equivalent of forty high-quality interactions. Same time investment. Dramatically different results.

When people dismiss sales as a “numbers game,” they focus only on the quantity side of the equation. They’ll tell you to make more calls, send more emails, reach out to more prospects. And when that doesn’t work, they’ll tell you to do even more of it.  Heck, you may even tell yourself that sometimes! That’s like telling someone to dig faster when they’re digging in the wrong spot.

What Quality Actually Means

Quality in sales isn’t some vague concept about being “good” at your job. It’s specific. It means properly executing the five steps of navigating the Buyer’s Journey.

Step One: Motivation. Creating or highlighting dissatisfaction with the status quo and helping the buyer envision a better future state. If your prospecting calls don’t accomplish this, you’re just making noise.

Step Two: Investigation. Asking comprehensive, customer-centric questions to help the buyer define their needs and priorities. If you’re doing surface-level qualifying instead of deep investigation, you’re missing 80% of what determines whether you’ll win the sale.

Step Three: Solution. Presenting a customized solution that directly addresses what you discovered in Investigation. If you’re giving generic presentations that ignore what the buyer told you, quality is zero.

Step Four: Evaluation. Providing clear, confident pricing and terms that allow the buyer to assess value. If you’re babbling before stating your price or afraid to talk money, you’re sabotaging yourself.

Step Five: Decision. Asking for the business when you’ve properly executed the previous four steps. If you’re not asking, all the previous work was wasted.

This is what quality means. Proper execution of these steps. Not charm, not personality, not even product knowledge – though those things help. Quality is navigating the Buyer’s Journey effectively.

What the “Numbers Game” Lacks

The problem with the “numbers game” mentality is that it encourages volume without regard to execution. Make a hundred cold calls where you fail to create motivation? You’ve burned through a hundred prospects who now associate your company with annoying interruptions.

Send a thousand emails that don’t address specific buyer needs? You’ve trained a thousand prospects to delete your messages.  HINT:  Don’t send cold emails at all these days.  Even the best email gets deleted and gets you blocked as a spammer.

Give fifty presentations that ignore what buyers told you in Investigation? You’ve wasted your time and theirs.

High quantity with low quality doesn’t just produce poor results – it actively damages your reputation and future opportunities.

The Multiplication Effect

Here’s where the equation gets interesting: When you improve quality, results don’t increase arithmetically – they increase exponentially.

A salesperson making fifty calls per day with 0.3 quality execution is getting the equivalent of fifteen quality interactions. That’s their baseline.

Improve their execution to 0.6 quality, and suddenly they’re getting thirty quality interactions – double the results with the same activity level.

Improve to 0.8 quality, and they’re getting forty quality interactions – nearly triple the original results.

Same number of calls. Same time investment. Dramatically different outcomes.  This is why focusing on quality multiplies your results while focusing only on quantity adds to them.

The Investigation Phase Is Everything in the Buyer’s Journey!

If there’s one step where quality matters most, it’s Investigation. This is where 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined. Comprehensive, customer-centric questioning that helps the buyer define their needs and vision of success – that’s the difference between winning and losing. Between being seen as a salesperson and being seen as a person of value.

You can’t make up for poor Investigation with a great presentation. You can’t overcome shallow questioning with aggressive closing. If you don’t correctly capture, interpret, and understand the buyer’s needs in this phase, nothing else matters. The “numbers game” crowd will tell you to rush through this phase to get to more prospects. That’s exactly backwards. Invest the time. Ask the questions. Do the Investigation right. Then multiply those results across your activity.

Going Forward

Stop thinking about sales as a numbers game. Start thinking about it as an equation. Yes, you need quantity. Activity matters. You can’t succeed by making five perfect calls per week. But you also can’t succeed by making a hundred terrible calls per day. The equation is quantity times quality. Both matter. Both multiply each other.

Focus on executing the five steps of the Buyer’s Journey with every prospect. Create real motivation. Conduct thorough investigation. Present customized solutions. Provide clear evaluation. Ask for the decision.

Do that consistently, and you’ll discover something the “numbers game” crowd never figures out: Quality doesn’t just improve results – it multiplies them. That’s not a game. That’s mathematics.

Let me be clear from the start: I’m not anti-AI. I use it. I appreciate what it can do when deployed intelligently. I’m tech-forward and believe artificial intelligence has legitimate applications that can make businesses more efficient and effective.

But we’ve already hit the tipping point of overuse, and the consequences are starting to show up everywhere.

Does it Really Make You More Productive?

A recent Harvard Business Review study revealed something startling: even as more companies implement AI-driven processes, 95% see no increase in productivity. Think about that. Companies are investing heavily in AI tools, reorganizing workflows around them, and training employees to use them – yet productivity remains flat or actually declines.  When you factor in their investment, they’re actually losing money.

The culprit? What researchers call “workslop” – AI-generated content that fills pages but says nothing meaningful. Or worse, says inaccurate things with complete confidence.

Deloitte just had to refund a significant portion of a $440,000 government contract because their report contained numerous AI-fabricated citations. Someone – likely multiple people – reviewed that report before delivery. Nobody caught the fabrications because nobody actually vetted the AI’s work.

That’s the core problem we’re facing: people are treating AI as a replacement for human judgment rather than a tool that requires human oversight.

AI as Your Brilliant Intern

From the start, I’ve advocated thinking about AI the way I think about a brilliant intern: high IQ, multiple degrees, access to vast amounts of information – but zero street smarts and no real-world experience.

You wouldn’t hand a critical project to an intern and assume the output was correct without review. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening with AI across industries. People are accepting AI-generated work as finished product rather than first draft that requires human refinement and verification.

The intern needs supervision. They need context. They need someone with judgment and experience to review their work, identify the gaps, catch the errors, and add the nuance that only comes from actually understanding the problem you’re trying to solve.

AI is no different. It’s a powerful tool for research, initial drafts, data analysis, and pattern recognition. But it requires human intelligence to deploy artificial intelligence effectively.

AI Suspicion – It’s Real.

I’m seeing another dynamic emerging that should concern every business leader: AI suspicion.

Watch any remarkable video on social media and within seconds, you’ll see comments saying “That’s AI.” Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re wrong. But the suspicion is real and growing.

I recently saw a post from an executive coach whose daughter wrote a college paper entirely herself. It scored 70% AI-generated on the professor’s detection tool. The professor’s policy? Anything over 50% gets a zero.

Her daughter spent two days trying to “dumb down” her writing to game the detector. Let that sink in – a college student learning to write worse to avoid being falsely accused of using AI.

This is what happens when we outsource evaluation to algorithms. The detection tools don’t actually detect AI – they detect patterns associated with AI, which often means clear, well-structured writing gets flagged while actual AI-generated garbage slips through because it’s been prompted to “sound more human.”  Remember – AI is an information aggregator, first and foremost.  If the “AI Detector” decides that most college writing is junk, then the student who turns in something that’s not junk gets penalized.

The same dynamic is playing out in business. Authentic human work is getting dismissed as AI while AI-generated content is accepted as authentic. We’re creating a world where people are incentivized to produce lower-quality work to avoid suspicion.

What Your  Empowered Buyers Actually Want

Here’s what this means for business relationships: your customers and prospects are developing sophisticated detection skills for AI-generated content. They can tell when they’re reading generic, AI-produced responses to their inquiries. They can hear the lag in AI phone calls. They recognize template-based outreach that’s been “personalized” by inserting their name and company.

And increasingly, they’re making buying decisions based on whether they feel like they’re dealing with a real person who understands their situation or an automated system that’s trying to appear human.

Today’s empowered buyers – especially younger, tech-savvy decision-makers – have grown up surrounded by AI and automation. They’re not impressed by it. They’re suspicious of it. What impresses them is authentic human expertise, genuine understanding of their challenges, and real intellectual curiosity about their business.  Gen-Z, in particular, likes the “adults in the room” feel.  AI doesn’t give them that.

The generational dynamics here matter enormously. Millennials and Gen Z buyers can smell AI-generated content from a mile away. They value authenticity precisely because it’s becoming rare.

The Coming Correction

I predict that by 2027, we’ll see AI move back to where it belongs: a valuable tool used strategically, not a core process to be blindly relied upon.

Companies will realize that:

• AI without human oversight creates legal and professional liability
• Audiences increasingly distrust AI-generated content
• Productivity gains require thoughtful implementation, not wholesale replacement
• Authenticity is becoming a competitive advantage in a world saturated with AI content

This doesn’t mean abandoning AI. It means being authentically intelligent about how we deploy artificial intelligence.

How to Use AI Intelligently

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Automate research, not relationship building. Use AI to gather data, identify patterns, and surface insights. Use humans to build connections, understand context, and make judgments.

Treat AI output as a first draft, not finished product. This is HUGE. Every AI-generated piece of content should be reviewed, refined, and verified by someone with actual expertise in the subject matter.

Maintain human touchpoints where they matter most. Customer communication, sales outreach, problem-solving, and relationship building should remain primarily human activities, supported (not replaced) by AI tools.

Be transparent about AI use. When you use AI for certain functions, be upfront about it. Trying to pass off AI-generated content as human-created erodes trust when people figure it out – and they usually do.

Invest in human skills that AI can’t replicate. Judgment, empathy, creativity, strategic thinking, and genuine relationship building are becoming more valuable, not less, in an AI-saturated world.

The Bottom Line

AI isn’t going away, and it shouldn’t. Used properly, it’s a powerful tool that can eliminate grunt work, surface insights, and improve efficiency. But we need to be authentically intelligent about how we use artificial intelligence.

That means recognizing its limitations, maintaining human oversight, and understanding that in a world increasingly filled with AI-generated content, authentic human expertise and genuine connection are becoming differentiators rather than commodities.

The companies that win in the next decade won’t be the ones that automated everything. They’ll be the ones that thoughtfully combined AI capabilities with human judgment to create experiences that feel genuinely helpful rather than artificially intelligent.

We don’t need less AI. We need more wisdom about how to use it.

That’s not retreating from technology. That’s being smart about it.

“But Troy, younger people aren’t using LinkedIn. It’s perceived as something for old people.”

This objection comes up almost every time the topic of LinkedIn strategy gets raised in sales meetings. It’s become the go-to excuse for salespeople who don’t want to invest time in building a LinkedIn presence. Here’s the problem: It’s completely false. And the salespeople clinging to this myth are missing out on connecting with the exact demographic they claim to be trying to reach.

The Numbers Don’t Lie – I Checked.

Current LinkedIn demographics paint a very different picture than what these skeptics believe. Worldwide, 50.6% of LinkedIn users are aged 25-34, with another 24.5% falling into the 18-24 age group. In the United States specifically, 47% of LinkedIn users are Millennials and 29% are Gen Z.

Do the math: roughly 75% of LinkedIn users are under 35. If LinkedIn is “for old people,” then apparently three-quarters of its users didn’t get the memo. (Maybe the memo wasn’t posted on LinkedIn.) These aren’t passive users either. Young professionals are actively networking, engaging with business content, sharing career updates, and building their professional brands. They’re commenting on industry discussions, following thought leaders, and researching potential vendors and partners.

In other words, they’re doing exactly what salespeople should want their prospects to be doing – being active and engaged on a professional platform where they can be reached.  Think of LinkedIn as a networking room where nobody is sitting on the sidelines, people are having engaged, professional conversations, and are open to contact.  Want to be in that networking room?  Me, too.

Where This Myth Really Comes From

Here’s what’s telling about this “LinkedIn is for old people” objection: It never comes from people who actually use LinkedIn regularly. It comes from salespeople who aren’t on the platform and don’t want to learn something new. This isn’t really about demographics. This is about fear of change disguised as market analysis.

It’s about preferring “tried and true” methods that are now just tried. It’s about laziness masquerading as strategy. It’s about salespeople who would rather stick with cold calling and email blasts than adapt to where their buyers actually spend their professional time. I see this in many other areas of sales right now, not just LinkedIn.  The irony is thick: salespeople complaining that they can’t reach younger buyers while simultaneously refusing to engage on the platform where younger buyers are most active professionally. On a certain level, I get it – change can be scary, and it can be time-consuming.  But if you want to stay relevant, change is mandatory.

The Participation Problem

Even among salespeople who claim to be “on LinkedIn,” most are spectators, not participants. They have a profile – often outdated and poorly optimized – and they might scroll through their feed during coffee breaks. Some share the occasional company blog post or industry article. But posting original thoughts? Commenting meaningfully on prospects’ content? Engaging in industry discussions? Building relationships through consistent value-driven content? That’s rare.

Most salespeople treat LinkedIn like a business card directory instead of the dynamic relationship-building platform it actually is. They’re present but not participating. They’re watching the conversation instead of joining it. This passive approach explains why so many salespeople don’t see results from LinkedIn and conclude it “doesn’t work” for their industry or demographic.  Like many other elements of selling, you get out of it what you put into it.

The Real Opportunity For You

While these skeptics debate demographics and make excuses, their competitors are building relationships with exactly the buyers they claim to be targeting. Young B2B decision makers are on LinkedIn researching solutions, following industry trends, and engaging with content that helps them do their jobs better. They’re also evaluating potential vendors based on their thought leadership, industry knowledge, and professional presence.  Remember – the average age of a B2B buyer is 36.  Slot that into the demographics above.

When they’re ready to buy, who do you think they’re more likely to engage with – the salesperson who’s been sharing valuable insights and engaging thoughtfully with their content, or the one who shows up out of nowhere with a cold email or phone call?  Many times, I see buyers researching salespeople on LinkedIn before engaging. The generational disconnect isn’t about the platform. It’s about salespeople who refuse to adapt to where their buyers actually spend their professional time.

What Real LinkedIn Engagement Looks Like

Sales professionals who actually succeed on LinkedIn (and there are many of them) understand that success requires genuine participation, not just presence. They commit to spending at least 20 minutes daily on the platform – not just reading posts or sharing company material, but actually engaging as thought leaders and industry participants. This means:

Posting original thoughts about industry trends, customer challenges, or lessons learned. Not company press releases or recycled motivational quotes – actual insights that demonstrate expertise and perspective.  Salespeople are the best collectors of success stories and best practices in the business world.  And here’s a ready-made platform for using these stories and practices to make yourself a thought leader.

Commenting meaningfully on prospects’ posts, industry discussions, and relevant content. Adding value to conversations instead of just hitting the “like” button.

Reacting and engaging with content from their network in ways that keep them visible and top-of-mind with prospects and referral sources.

Starting conversations through direct messages that reference specific posts, shared connections, or genuine business interests – not generic sales pitches.  But stay away from the generic “pitch slaps.” This level of engagement takes time and effort. It requires thinking about what to say and how to add value. It’s much easier to stick with the familiar routine of cold calls and email blasts. But easy doesn’t mean effective.

The Cost of Staying on the Sidelines

The sales world is changing rapidly. Buyers have more information, more options, and less patience for traditional sales approaches. They’re researching solutions independently, building vendor shortlists without sales input, and making decisions based on reputation and thought leadership as much as product features. In this environment, salespeople who aren’t building their professional brand and engaging with prospects where they spend their time are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They’re watching opportunities go to competitors who invested in building relationships through consistent, valuable engagement.

The “LinkedIn is for old people” myth isn’t just wrong – it’s costly. Every day spent clinging to outdated assumptions is another day competitors are building relationships with the prospects these skeptics claim don’t exist.

The Bottom Line

Your prospects are on LinkedIn. The younger decision makers you want to reach are actively engaging on the platform. The question isn’t whether they’re there – the question is whether you’re there in a meaningful way. If you’re not fully participating, you’re missing out. Stop making excuses about demographics. Stop treating LinkedIn like a passive business directory. Start engaging like the professional platform it is.

Twenty minutes a day. Original posts. Meaningful comments. Genuine engagement. Do that consistently, and you’ll discover what successful salespeople already know: LinkedIn isn’t just where younger buyers are – it’s where relationships are built and deals are won.

The choice is yours: adapt to where your buyers are, or keep making excuses while your competitors build the relationships that should have been yours.

A LinkedIn poll caught attention recently with this question: “Who makes better B2B salespeople?” The options were:

• Former athletes – They live for competition & teamwork
• Theater kids – Natural performers who command attention
• Engineers – They speak the customer’s language
• Career salespeople – Nothing beats pure sales DNA

Within hours, hundreds of sales professionals were debating the merits of each option, sharing stories about their backgrounds, and defending their favorite candidate types.

Here’s the problem: This entire conversation reveals everything wrong with how most salespeople think about their role in the buying process, and it exposes the identity crisis in sales.

The Backwards Focus Problem

The poll focuses entirely on what the salesperson brings to the table – their competitiveness, their performance skills, their technical knowledge, or their supposed “sales DNA.” What it completely ignores is what actually matters: the customer and what they need from a salesperson.

This backwards thinking explains why so many talented people from impressive backgrounds struggle in sales while others with no “obvious” sales traits consistently crush their numbers.

The reality? Success in sales isn’t about what you say or how well you say it. It’s about what you ask and how well you listen to the answers.

What Buyers Actually Want

Here’s what the poll should have asked: “What do B2B buyers actually want from salespeople?”

The answer isn’t someone who can out-compete them, entertain them, or speak technical jargon at them. Buyers want salespeople who understand their world, ask intelligent questions about their challenges, and provide insights they haven’t considered.

They want someone who’s more interested in solving their problems than showcasing their own skills.

This is where the poll’s options fall short:

Former athletes bring competitiveness, but buyers aren’t looking for someone to beat them – they’re looking for someone to help them win.

Theater kids know how to command attention, but modern buyers are overwhelmed with people trying to get their attention. They’re more likely to value someone who gives them attention instead.

Engineers might speak technical language, but only when selling to other engineers. More importantly, technical knowledge without business acumen often leads to feature-focused presentations that miss the buyer’s real concerns.

Career salespeople might have experience, but if that experience consists of outdated techniques and seller-focused approaches, it’s actually counterproductive.

The One Trait That Actually Drives Sales Success

The best salespeople, regardless of their background, share one crucial characteristic: intellectual curiosity.

This is the trait that makes you want to know more about your prospect’s situation, ask better questions about their challenges, and dig deeper into their world. When you do, you discover needs, uncover pain points, and identify opportunities that your less curious competitors miss entirely – which means that you really don’t have competitors on that particular Buyer’s Journey.

Intellectual curiosity isn’t just nice to have – it’s the foundation of everything that works in modern selling.

Think about it: 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined by the time you ask your last question. The salespeople who understand this – who are naturally driven to keep asking – are the ones who consistently outperform their peers.

How Curiosity Changes Everything

When you approach selling with genuine intellectual curiosity, everything changes:

Your prospecting improves because you’re researching prospects to understand their world, not just to find contact information.

Your conversations get deeper because you’re asking follow-up questions instead of jumping to your next talking point.

Your presentations become relevant because you actually understand what matters to this specific prospect.

Your proposals address real needs because you’ve uncovered the problems that keep your prospects awake at night.

Your follow-up creates value because you’re sharing insights and resources, not just checking in.

None of this requires being a former athlete, a natural performer, or a technical expert. It just requires being genuinely interested in understanding your prospect’s situation.

The Generational Reality Check

This focus on curiosity becomes even more critical when you consider today’s buying environment. Modern B2B buyers – especially Millennials and Gen-Z decision makers – have already done their research before they talk to you.

They’ve read your website, checked out your competitors, and probably know as much about your product features as you do. What they can’t get from Google is someone who asks thoughtful questions about their specific situation and helps them think through implications they haven’t considered.

The old-school approach of launching into a polished presentation is going to lose every time to the curious salesperson who helps them discover new angles on their challenges.

The Questions That Actually Matter

Intellectually curious salespeople ask different questions:

Instead of “What’s your budget?” they ask “What happens if you don’t solve this problem?”

Instead of “When are you looking to make a decision?” they ask “What would success look like six months after implementation?”

Instead of “Who else are you looking at?” they ask “What criteria are most important in your evaluation process?”

These aren’t clever techniques or manipulative tactics. They’re the natural questions that come from genuine curiosity about the prospect’s situation.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

In an age where buyers can research solutions online, compare vendors through reviews, and even make purchases without talking to salespeople, the value you bring isn’t product knowledge or presentation skills.

Your value is your ability to help prospects think through their situation more thoroughly than they would on their own. That requires understanding their world well enough to ask questions they haven’t thought of and provide perspectives they haven’t considered.

You can’t do that by performing, competing, or reciting technical specifications. You can only do it by being genuinely curious about their challenges and invested in helping them succeed.

The Bottom Line for Salespeople

Forget the LinkedIn poll categories. Forget worrying about whether you have the “right” background for sales. Focus on developing the one trait that actually drives success: intellectual curiosity about your prospects and their challenges.

Ask better questions. Listen more carefully to the answers. Dig deeper into their situation. Connect dots they haven’t connected. Do that consistently, and your background won’t matter. Your prospects will see you as the salesperson who actually understands their world – and that’s the only credential that really counts.

The next time someone asks what makes a great salesperson, the answer should be simple: Someone curious enough to ask the right questions and smart enough to act on what they learn.

Everything else is just noise.