Most of us have built our sales careers by knowing our stuff and explaining it well.
We know our products, our market, and our customers. We’ve got stories of problems solved and deals won. Under pressure, all that expertise pulls us one way. We talk more.
A customer mentions a challenge. We see the pattern. We jump in with an answer, a feature, a story or a “here’s how this works”. It feels helpful. It feels like we’re earning the right to ask for next steps.
The problem is simple. When we explain too soon, customers might not have to think deeply. Their unique challenges and opportunities might remain vague. Customer outcomes might never really get defined. Important stakeholders might never even get mentioned.
We can use our hard-won expertise in a different way.
Instead of explaining, we can use our product knowledge, market insight, customer stories and Sales Reset ideas to ask sharper questions. We can help customers articulate what success would look like and what it would mean for their colleagues.
Then everyone can decide together whether this is a real opportunity that deserves more time and effort to take to the next stage.
Why explaining feels so safe
Think about a recent customer meeting where you felt you were in very familiar territory.
The customer described an issue. Perhaps they spoke about the costs of extra manual work or delays. Maybe it was about compliance risk or slow and inadequate reporting. Or whatever challenges you and your products address.
You recognised the issues straight away. You knew exactly which part of your offer could help.
So you might so easily do what you’ve been rewarded for in the past. You explained how you’d seen this before. You told a customer story. You walked through the relevant features. You answered their questions. You might even have mentioned the outcomes achieved by other customers.
On the surface, it went well. They nodded. They said it made sense. They asked you to send something. You logged a qualified opportunity.
But step back and ask:
Did they define, in their words, what success would look like?
Did they spell out who else would feel the impact if this worked?
Did they describe how this change would be reported, and to whom?
If the answer is “not really”, you were probably acting as an expert talker, not an outcome architect. You were using your expertise to advise your customer, not to explore implications.
Turning expertise into better questions
Now picture the same kind of call, but with you using your expertise as fuel for questions rather than for explanations.
The customer describes the same issues. This time, you pause. You pick one crucial aspect of what they just outlined.
Instead of jumping in with “we’ve helped lots of customers with exactly that”, you take that phrase and dig deeper:
“You mentioned [X]. What does that actually look like in your world?”
“When that happens, who feels it most?”
“If this were fixed, what would change for them?”
“How would this change and improvement be reported, and to whom?
“What might be the value of this change to your organisation?”
Your product knowledge, market insight, and customer stories remain highly relevant. They guide what you listen to and which topics you pursue. They help you sense when something is small and tactical or big and strategic.
But in the conversation, your expertise shows up mainly as better questions, not longer speeches.
You might bring in a short example, but you use it to set up the next question, not to occupy five minutes of airtime:
“I worked with a customer where this problem only really mattered to one team. In your case, who else might be affected if you achieved this?”
By the third or fourth question on one important theme, your customer is usually in new territory. They’re doing the hard thinking out loud. You’re using your expertise to help them see what they hadn’t said before.
Is this a real opportunity or not?
After 10–15 minutes using your expertise this way, you can usually see one of two things.
Either:
There’s a clear outcome for customers in their words
At least one other stakeholder who matters has been identified
There’s the outline of a business case you could build together
or:
The outcome stays vague
The impact looks small
No one else seems likely to care enough to get involved
Both are useful.
In the first case, you can suggest capturing what you’ve heard into a short working proposal or summary and check it in front of them:
“Here’s what I think success would look like for you and your colleagues, and who’d feel it. What have I missed or oversimplified?”
In the second case, you can be honest:
“Based on what we’ve explored, I’m not sure this is strong enough yet to justify more time. We can park it for now and come back if the impact grows.”
Your expertise is still central. It just leads to cleaner decisions. You waste less time on marginal opportunities and invest more time in outcomes that are real and deliverable for customers.
What to test in your next few calls
You don’t need to change everything at once. Try this in your next two or three calls where you might typically do a lot of explaining:
Before the meeting, pick one or two specific phrases you expect to hear (for example, “compliance risk”, “renewals pressure”, “manual work”).
In the call, when one of those comes up, don’t explain straight away. Ask three or four linked questions about that one phrase.
Use one short customer example only if it sets up a better question.
After the call, look at your notes or the meeting transcript and ask:
“Where did I use my expertise to explain when I could have used all that I know to ask a great question?”
“Did my expertise-based questions lead the customer to say anything about the outcomes they need or stakeholders that surprised me?”
Over time, as you use your expertise more to ask and less to explain, you’ll build a pipeline with fewer vague opportunities and more deals where outcomes for customers, stakeholders and basic business cases are already visible.
You’ll still be the expert – just the expert who helps customers think more clearly, not the one who does most of the talking.
