Most experienced sellers know that talking a lot about what they’re selling isn’t the best way to sell.
We’ve all been taught to ask better questions. On good days, we do. On bad days, pressure drags us back into talking about what we sell.
In most meetings with salespeople, everyone expects the old pattern. The seller explains. The customer asks a few questions. The seller answers the questions and tries to persuade.
That’s the script we all grew up with. It feels safe, even when it doesn’t work very well.
The problem is simple. In that familiar pattern, customers don’t have to think deeply.
Their challenges and opportunities often stay vague. Outcomes for customers aren’t sufficiently well defined. Deals drift, stall, or turn into something much smaller than we hoped.
This article is about a different kind of conversation. You use coaching skills with customers so they do most of the hard thinking out loud. You dig deeper into what really matters, helping them to define clear outcomes and implications.
Then you can decide together whether this is a real opportunity that deserves some agreed next actions and a plan. Or both the seller and buyer deliberately choose not to develop the conversation further at this time.
The usual script – even when you “know better”
Picture a first call with a new account. You ask a few warm-up questions. They mention a reporting problem or pressure to cut costs. You feel the pull to show how your solution helps. You start talking. You explain features. They ask questions. You answer their questions. They nod and say it sounds interesting.
On the surface, nothing’s wrong. They’re engaged. They ask for a document or a demo. You log an opportunity. You agree a loose next step. It feels like progress.
But look closely. You still don’t have:
Clear outcomes for customers in their own words
Any real sense of who else will be affected or might care
Even a simple picture of how this change and improvement would be reported, and to whom
A basic sense of whether there’s a strong enough business case to justify time and effort
Even if you’ve already worked with Sales Reset ideas, this slip can still happen all too easily if you don’t pay attention.
Under time pressure, or with a senior person on the call, it’s easy to fall back into the expected role: explain, reassure, persuade. The pipeline fills with deals that sound promising but rest on soft ground.
A different kind of call
Now imagine the same conversation, but you treat it as a short working session on their success, not a chance to demonstrate product knowledge.
You set the frame early. Something like:
“Rather than start with details about my products and services, can we use the first part of our time together to get clear on what a good outcome would look like for you and your colleagues? Then we can see if there’s a potential fit.”
They describe the same issue. Instead of moving straight to features, you listen for the most important part of their answer. It might be a delay, a specific risk, a team that’s under pressure, or a missed opportunity.
You make that the theme of your next question:
“You mentioned month-end delays. What actually happens in your world when the reports are late?”
They answer. You dig deeper again:
“And when that happens, who’s most exposed or most frustrated?”
You stay on that one thread for a third and fourth question:
“If we fixed that, what would change for them?”
“How would this change and improvement be reported, and to whom?”
By the third or fourth question, you’re probably in new territory your customer hasn’t explored before. You’re using your product and market knowledge not to answer questions and explain, but to ask sharper questions.
If you ask your questions skilfully, your customer is likely to welcome the chance to think through what they’re hoping to achieve. They’re now saying out loud what success would really look like and who’d feel it. You might choose to ask a simple stakeholder question:
“Who else might be affected if you achieved this?”
At this point, one of two things is true:
You’ve got the bones of a working proposal in their words and at least one other person who might choose to get involved in the discussion, or
You both see that the outcome is too vague or low-value to justify more time right now
Both are good outcomes. The second one just means you qualify out earlier instead of pretending there’s a real deal when there isn’t.
For sellers who already use coaching skills with customers, this isn’t brand new. The upgrade is about consistency and honesty: you run more conversations this way, especially when quota pressure is high, and you’re more willing to walk away when customer outcomes can’t be clearly defined.
What to change in your next few conversations
You don’t need a 10-step script. You need a few different moves.
Next time you’re on a call where you’d normally be expected to pitch:
Frame the conversation as a working session on outcomes for this specific customer, not a product tour
Pick the most important aspects of what they say and dig deeper with your second, third and fourth questions on the same theme
Ask who else would feel the impact, and who’d need to see a simple summary if this went further
Afterwards, look at your notes or the transcript (if you record calls and use AI to summarise) and ask:
“Did we establish sufficiently well-defined outcomes for this customer, in their words?”
“Did we identify at least one other person who matters?”
“Is this strong enough to count as a real opportunity, or should I qualify out and move on?”
If the answer is “no” and “no”, treating it as a weak or parked opportunity is not failure. It’s Sales Reset working as designed.
You still carry a quota.
You’re more likely to achieve quota faster and more reliably by spending more time on deals where outcomes for customers are real and deliverable – and less time trying to persuade people who haven’t done their hard thinking yet.
