I had a conversation last week with a salesperson who was frustrated with his results. He’d been reading sales books, listening to podcasts, and absorbing content from LinkedIn influencers. He was fired up and ready to completely overhaul his approach. “I’m going to rebuild my entire prospecting process,” he told me. “New messaging, new cadence, new everything. I’m going to document it all and create a whole system.”
I asked him when he was going to start. “Well, I need to block out some time to really think through the strategy. Probably next month when things slow down.” Translation: Never.
This is the trap I see salespeople, sales managers, and business owners fall into constantly. They want massive transformation. They create huge projects out of small tasks. And then they do nothing because the project feels too big to start.
Remember – You Probably Don’t Completely Suck
Here’s what happens when you decide to completely overhaul something:
You get excited about the vision. You imagine how much better everything will be once you’ve rebuilt your entire approach from the ground up. You start planning the project – all the steps, all the components, all the changes you need to make.
And then reality hits. You’re busy. You have quotas to hit. You have current prospects to manage. You don’t actually have three weeks to disappear into a conference room and rebuild your sales process. So you don’t start. The massive change project sits on your to-do list, making you feel guilty every time you see it, while you keep doing exactly what you’ve always done.
And the truth is that what you’ve always done probably doesn’t completely suck. If it did, you wouldn’t be making a living.
Meanwhile, the salesperson who added one new question to their discovery process three months ago has asked that question on fifty calls by now. They’ve learned what works, refined the wording, and incorporated it into their natural flow – and they’ve discarded what doesn’t work. Guess who’s actually improved?
“One More” Works
Instead of massive change projects, embrace the “one more” philosophy. Learn one more question. Get one more appointment. Make one more call. Read one more chapter. Try one more approach.
One more. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.
It sounds almost insultingly simple, but here’s why it works: You can actually do it. Today. Right now. Without planning, without blocking out time, without creating a project plan. Want to improve your discovery questioning? Don’t rebuild your entire discovery process. Learn one more question that helps you understand buyer motivation. Use it on your next three calls. See what happens. Adjust if needed. Then learn another one.
Want to hit your appointment targets more consistently? Don’t redesign your entire prospecting approach. Make one more call today than you made yesterday. Tomorrow, do it again. Want to get better at handling price objections? Don’t create a comprehensive objection-handling playbook. Learn one more way to respond to “your price is too high.” Try it on your next call. See if it works better than what you’ve been saying.
Why This Actually Creates Change
Incremental improvement is like interest at the bank. It compounds.
One more question doesn’t sound like much. But if you learn one new question per month and actually use it, you’ll have twelve new questions in your arsenal by this time next year (and probably discarded 12 weaker ones). Your discovery conversations will be dramatically better – not because you overhauled everything at once, but because you kept adding one more piece.
One more appointment per week doesn’t sound impressive. But that’s fifty-two more appointments per year. At even modest close rates, that’s significant revenue impact – achieved not through heroic effort, but through consistent incremental improvement. The math works in your favor when you stack small improvements over time. Just like compound interest.
Apply “One More” to the Buyer’s Journey
Remember, 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined by the time you ask your last question. That happens in the Investigation phase of the Buyer’s Journey. You don’t improve Investigation by completely rebuilding how you conduct discovery calls. You improve it by adding one more insightful question. Then another. Then another.
Over time, your Investigation becomes comprehensive and customer-centric – not because you created a massive project, but because you kept asking “what’s one more thing I should understand about my buyer’s situation?”
The same principle applies to every phase of the Buyer’s Journey:
Motivation: Learn one more way to highlight dissatisfaction with the status quo. Solution: Add one more way to demonstrate how your solution addresses their specific needs. Evaluation: Get one percent better at presenting pricing confidently. Decision: Try one more approach to asking for the business. None of these require massive change projects. All of them improve your results.
For Sales Managers and Business Owners
This philosophy applies to developing your team just as much as it applies to individual salespeople.
Stop trying to overhaul everything all at once (unless you truly have a dumpster fire). Instead, focus on one improvement this month. Maybe it’s getting everyone to ask one specific question during discovery. Maybe it’s having everyone make one more prospecting call per day. Maybe it’s implementing one simple accountability metric. One thing. Get everyone doing it consistently. Then add the next thing.
The sales managers who succeed aren’t the ones with the most elaborate systems on paper. They’re the ones who actually get their teams to change behavior – which happens through small, consistent improvements, not massive overhauls. Again – compound interest.
The Discipline of Small Steps
Here’s the hard part about the “one more” philosophy: It requires discipline.
Massive change projects are exciting. They feel important. You can talk about them in meetings. You can create presentations about your vision for transformation. One more question? One more call? That doesn’t feel exciting. It feels almost embarrassingly small. But small and done beats big and planned every single time. My friend Darren LaCroix has a great saying: “Done is more profitable than perfect,” and he’s right.
The discipline is in actually doing the one more thing every day, even when it doesn’t feel significant. In trusting that these small improvements compound. In resisting the urge to create a massive project instead of just taking the next small step.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Start today. Not next week when you have more time. Today. Pick one thing – one question, one activity, one skill – that would improve your results if you did it better or more often. Do it one more time today than you normally would.
Tomorrow, do it again. Don’t create a project plan. Don’t document a comprehensive new system. Don’t wait for the perfect time to overhaul everything. You don’t need a whiteboard or a new app for this. Just do one more.
Next month, pick another one. Keep the first one going, and add a second small improvement. By the end of the year, you’ll have made twelve small improvements that have become habits. Your results will be dramatically different – not because you executed one massive change, but because you stacked twelve small ones.
Reaping Your Rewards
Real improvement in sales doesn’t come from massive transformation projects that never get started. It comes from small, consistent, incremental changes that actually get implemented. Stop planning the overhaul. Stop creating the comprehensive new system. Stop waiting for the perfect time to make big changes.
Learn one more question. Make one more call. Try one more approach. One more. Do it today. Do it again tomorrow. Stack these improvements over time. Make compound interest work for you.
That’s how good salespeople become great ones. Not through dramatic transformation, but through relentless incremental improvement.
What’s your one more for today?
