Sales is More than Common Sense
What are You Assuming Your People Know?
A sales manager on my team used to coach her reps to “ask probing questions.” She almost preached it.
She assumed it was common sense that those questions should come after building rapport. Unfortunatedly, she never actually said that.
One young rep took the direction literally. In early discovery calls, he jumped straight into questions about employee health and internal cost structures.
The questions were strong, but the timing was not. Prospects shut down fast.
He wasn’t being careless. He thought he was doing exactly what he was told.
When you only give the bolded part of the playbook, your team skips the context.
Sales is more than common sense.
It’s a series of small decisions in conversation- and if you haven’t documented the how, don’t be surprised when the what falls flat.
