Episode 69: 3 Sales Lessons From the Worst Pitch I've Ever Sat Through

Your sales team knows the product cold. They can recite the sourcing, the specs, the packaging. And they still lose the room.

Sam's wife sent him four separate texts about a "tired eyes" treatment during a family cruise. (One text is a suggestion. Four is a diagnosis.) He finally went — mostly for the story — and got a masterclass in how not to sell. No greeting. No questions. Fifteen minutes on where the algae is harvested. Then three prices thrown on the table, a line about paying with your room card, and the guy walked away.

In this episode Sam breaks down the three things that pitch got wrong, and what executives should be coaching their sales teams to do instead — contrasted with a Fleet Feet shoe fitting that closed the sale before anyone mentioned a number.

Key Takeaways:

• People aren't as interested in your product as they are in their problem. Your team lives inside the product. Your prospect lives inside the problem. Diagnosis before prescription.
• People aren't as interested in the price as they are in the value. There is no such thing as too expensive — price is relative to perceived value and allocated budget. Build value before you reveal price.
• Interpret the results for them. Don't hand someone the proof and forget to mention it. Show the before and the after.
• The greatest commodity you're selling is transformation, not product.

Resources:

• Book a conversation with Sam: calendly.com/sam-samuellinton
• Free Competence–Communication Audit: samuellinton.com/audit
• Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/samuellintonadvisor

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Transcript

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So my wife sent me a several texts over the course of our time away together. And the texts had to do with a program that was being offered in the we were on a cruise with our family. We did a big family cruise, it was amazing. Uh short uh, you know, six-day cruise, it was wonderful. But four times, four separate times, this is more of a marital episode, she sent me a an advertisement for something that said, alleviate your tired eyes. Now, one time is like, cool, this is something I might look into. The second time I'm thinking, hey, I wonder if she sees something in my face. Third time, I'm insulted. Fourth time, I'm just gonna go just for the story. I'm gonna go for the story. So when you get to be a certain age, it just changed your appearance, it changes. And I do feel like I do feel like I look young for my age, but that's a feeling. Objectively, I probably look my age, but it does it doesn't make a difference. That's irrelevant. What does this have to do with you? This is a lesson in sales. I've been training sales teams lately. I've I have some workshops scheduled, different parts of the country, training sales teams, and uh I just spent a great amount of time with an awesome sales team. I learned a lot about their process, I learned a lot about their product, but I learned more from the lesson that I got when I went to the tired eyes station. And no, it wasn't about sleep, no, it wasn't about hydration, no, it wasn't about how my eyes actually do look youthful. He didn't say that at all. I'll tell you the whole experience, and I'm going to tell you today as a as an executive how do you train your sales team and what this experience taught me about sales. So you can take these away. This is going to be a very practical, albeit somewhat of a funny episode. But again, this is free. You get what you pay for, hopefully you get value. So here it is. I go to the tired eyes spot on the cruise ship, and there was me and one other young lady, about uh probably maybe half my age or close to that. So she's in her 20s, maybe early 20s, if if at all. Alright, so I'm sitting next to this lady, pretty lady, and she's also there for this tired eyes thing. So, dude comes out, sales guy comes out, and he is doesn't greet us, he throws in between us, there were these three different products. One was like a small box, one was a medium-sized box, and one was a big. You know, this is gonna cause a problem in your carry-on box. And all I keep thinking of is seething anger at my wife who sent me to this guy because my eyes. And I know I I do have tired eyes. I it's it's a I have a tendency. I don't have the sleepy eyes where it looks, you know, like you might some people have sleepy eyes where it looks sexy. I have eyes that look like, are you okay? Do we want to take you to a doctor? Like, are you do you want to go to the doctor? That's what you're it's not like, ooh, that guy's canceled. We got the sleepy eyes. No, this guy's like, hey, we gotta get him. I think he needs a transfusion or maybe an infusion or some sort of oozion, whatever. And that is the case with my eyes. But I digress. My point is, sales guy comes. And when he came, he sat down and he gave us a little vial. We each took a little, you know, he showed us how to apply the stuff under our eyes. I don't have, I'm I'm one of those types of guys where all of my skincare routine consists of like one bottle, whatever's in that bottle. I'm kidding. I have I actually have two products that I use. I use three. I will, I have three products. I use shampoo, a face wash, and a bar of soap. Those are my things. So I feel pretty good as a man because some people just get away with one, and those guys are I I I do have things. So anyway, uh this was a big deal. There are three different types, none of which I'm gonna buy. No plan on am I gonna buy any of these things. But I was curious as to what he was gonna do about a sales pitch. And he sat down, he looks at her, he looks at me, he says, This is how you ply the cream, this is great cream. And all he did, he didn't say hi, he didn't say where you're from, he said nothing. He talked about the products. He talked about how where it was sourced. And there was a type of algae that is harvested from a different part of the ocean that brings this type of hydration to your eyes, and it's the only hope you have for getting rid of bags under your eyes is using this algae, and you can only get it on this particular ship at this particular time. And he talked about the product, and he talked about how they source it, how they grow it, do they grow it? I don't know how they manufacture it, the the packaging, the premium, it's used in Hollywood, it's used, and he just kept going on and on and on. And then he looked at her and he looked at me, and he looked at her and he looked at me and he said to her, Well, this is good for preventative for you, because you know, you can use this every day and it'll prevent you from getting bags under your eyes. And then he looked at me and he said, Sometimes you can't prevent, but you can just do some sort of damage control. Like he was talking to her as if she was a freshly um chartered boat that has never been on the ocean that's perfect right now, and this is how you keep it perfect. For me, he looked at me like I was the pirate ship in the Pirates of the Caribbean that just has holes in it. And all you're trying to do is figure out how I can survive just to get back to shore? Because it's only a matter of time. I just have to get to shore. And basically, what he offered me was if I put this cream on, it'll keep my face from looking less dead, essentially. And I'm not embarrassed at all. I'm not, I'm not embarrassed because you a certain age things, it's you start to talk a different way when you reach your 40s than you did when you were in your 30s, than you're when you're in your 20s. When I'm with people in my age range, we start into the conversation. It's not the only thing we talk about, but a good portion of what it's easy to talk about is your ailments. Hey, did your back's been hurting? Yeah, I've been sleep apnea a little bit. Yeah, I've been getting problems with sleep or acid reflux or GERD. And you can spend easy, you can clock 30 minutes easy talking about your ailments. And I'm in the age right now where I have enough to add to the conversation. When I was in my 30s, I didn't have a lot to add to the conversation. When you're in your 40s, you could talk if you can't talk about your ailments from this year, you can talk about what happened last year. And when you're in your 50s and 60s, it's required reading. To get to the table, you have to talk about some of those things. And I a lot of this is tongue-in-cheek, and I'm joking, but let's talk about the sales guy. So he makes me feel kind of bad right off the bat, which, you know, not I knew I wasn't gonna buy anything. He probably looked at my tired face and knew this guy's not buying, he's not buying my cream. The whole entire process was about 20 minutes, 15 minutes, maybe. I'm being generous, maybe 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes. He made us put the cream on, didn't say anything about what happens when we put the cream on. And he said, This one is $100. He pointed to this little microscopic vial of cream. This middle package, which has another type of cream, and this one is $250, and then the top one is the big one, it's $400. And he said, You can pay with your room card. Have a good day, leaves. I'm sitting there with my my old worn-out face looking at this girl with a young worn-out face, and we both awkwardly got up and didn't speak because why would we need to? Like, she knows, she knows that I'm the pirate ship at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm the black pearl with the cannon ball holes. And she knows that she is young and time is on her side, and she doesn't need I need my whole entire life lathered in that cream. But she could get away with that microscopic dot. That little thing could probably last her for an entire year. For me, I won't even be able to make it off of the ship with the microscopic. I need the full-blown, give me the whole thing. That's how I felt at the end of that sales pitch. Again, I'm kidding. I I know this is an off-the-wall one. So I'm gonna tell you the three things that I learned about sales training and things that you can apply for your sales training from this different presentation that I got from this guy. Number one, people aren't as interested in your product as they are in their problem. People are not as interested in their product as you are as they are in their problem. So you want people when you're speaking, and when you're coaching your sales teams, if you're an executive, if you're a sales executive, if you don't have one of those, or if you want, if you don't have somebody like me or the budget to bring somebody like me in that can coach your sales team on speaking, you have to be aware that uh people are more interested in their problem. Why? Because they live with their problem, they don't have the bandwidth mentally to be as invested in your product as you are. So I'll give you an example. I have this book, my best-selling book, The Confident Communicator. And if I started this episode by saying, hey, I wrote this book, it took me 20 years of communication experience to distill all this down into one book. It took me 70 sleepless nights to write this book. I pressure tested this with 50 companies. I did all this and I put really funny illustrations in here, and it's told in the first person, and there's exercises and there's bolded thing. Like I could go on and on about this book probably for an hour. And you might politely let me go with that, but you're not gonna buy the book. You're not gonna care about the book. Now, what if I said, hey, you probably hate having to speak as much as the next person? Statistically, you hate speaking in public. Or you think when you speak in public or you speak and communicate to your team, you think there's a lot left on the table because you know you're not speaking as good as you could be. Doesn't that feeling suck? Doesn't it suck when you are speaking and you're so heavily dependent on your slides that you lose your place and you feel like if you don't say all the right words, that people are gonna think you're dumb and people are judging you, you don't know how it lands. You're not confident. Well, I wrote this book that gives you confidence before you speak and gives you tools. Like, for example, one of the biggest things that I get asked about is how to eliminate filler words. And there's two chapters in here that talk about speed that help you to slow down to get those filler words removed. Alright, so what's the difference in those pitches? I'm gonna stop because I could go on. Well, the difference is one is a focus on me, and one is a focus on you, the product versus the problem. So I hesitate to say this, but most of your sales teams are probably talking about how awesome your product is, when instead they should be talking about how awful their potential clients' problem is. Call this what you want. Teasing the pain, poking at the pain, getting people to be disgusted with the pain. You want people to be aware that you have thought through how painful it is the way that they live. This is the diagnosis before the prescription. This is the the the problem they've been living in. And this is the difference between an overwhelming list of things that people most likely won't use to one or two things that will show you that you have adequately thought about their problem. This guy didn't think, hey, you know, he didn't say, hey, did your wife send you down here? You know, your if your wife says that your eyes look tired, people other people probably think that too. Now I'm listening. Yeah, what what do you do for work? Um, I coach people to become better communicators. I'm a pastor, yeah. Do you think that people will think you lack credibility if you look tired all the time? No, but now I do, right? Like now you're speaking my language and you're focusing on my problem, right? So this guy didn't do any of that. He focused on the product, which I'm not saying the product is, I'm sure it's great. I'm sure him having to climb inside of a humpback wheel and go into the depths four miles beneath in the sea to get this particular type of algae. I'm sure all of that is worthwhile. I don't care. I don't care about your product, it doesn't matter. So people are more interested in their problem than they're interested in your product. Secondly, people aren't as interested in the price as they are in the value. People aren't as interested in the price as they are in the value. We could talk about prices all day, and there's so many books written about this and articles written about this, but here is the naked truth about price. There's no such thing as something that is too expensive or too cheap. There's no such thing as something that is out of bounds, like ridiculous that you would offer that, versus that's really a bargain. There's no such thing. Price is completely relative to the value and the budget of the person that you're talking to. Let me explain. Relativity. I consider myself a fairly good communicator. So I'm saying I'm a good communicator. If you put me next to somebody like a John Maxwell, or maybe a Donald Miller, or perhaps even a Tony Robbins, I'm not going to feel like I'm a good communicator. If you put me in a room by myself and ask me if I'm a good communicator, I will say that I'm probably better than average at communicating and facilitating. And because I'm comparing it to the average of the fact that most people don't want to do this. They don't want to do this. They don't want to go and train teams of people to communicate. They don't want to train groups of people and speak in a large group like that. Most people would not sign up for a job that requires that they stand up four times a weekend and communicate uninterrupted for 35 minutes to a group of people from all different races, nationalities, mixture of men and women, ages, all of that. But here I am, and this is what I've done for 22 years. So relative to the general population, I think I'm a fairly good communicator. I think I'm an excellent communicator. Relative to the best communicators I know, Tony Robbins, John Maxwell, maybe Andy Stanley, Craig Rochelle, preachers like me, no, I'm not good, right? What am I saying here? I'm saying that price is relative, cost is relative. So there's no such thing as this is good or bad. There is, is this appropriate to the level that you are charging? What you have to anchor it to is value. That means what it's worth to a person and the ability they have to pay for it. So for instance, a $400 skin care package, to me, well, I didn't see the value in it, so it's out of the question. If you said $400 and you'll look like Matt Damon, like people have said that I look like Matt Damon before. And when I mean people, I mean my mom did, and she didn't have her glasses on and she was on chemo. Like she said I look like Matt Damon once. So I I I will tell people people say I look like Matt Damon and I look like him because she said that. So to me, $400 is outlandish. Like my entire skincare physical routine, that that would supply probably five years of pro the products that I currently use on my skincare routine. But I also didn't see the value in it. And I also don't have that kind of budget to spend $400 just on my eyes. That's just not what I've budgeted for that particular thing. Whereas if you have somebody who has an extremely large budget when it comes to their eye care, their hair care, their skincare, all that stuff, if they have that type of budget and they're already spending maybe between five and eight hundred dollars a month to make their appearance look better, four hundred dollars is absolutely a bargain for a large amount of cream that's going to make you look younger. That's silly. If they already go to med spas, if they already have things that they're doing, that's nothing. It's a drop in the bucket. And so right there you see changing your client and changing the value is going to immediately make the price negligible. So the value would be: hey, if you put this cream on for a month, your eyes are going to look 10 years younger. If you put this cream on for a month, you're going to be able to see clearer, right? Now we're into value. So price is not as interesting as value. If you can, when you're coaching your sales teams, get them to realize that people are after value and what value means to them, they're going to be able to make the sale. You have to train them to build value in before they reveal the price. If you say $400,000, $600,000, $800 package, well, I don't care what that means, but if you say this is typically something that would chart, you know, cost people X amount of money, $25,000, I could give it to you for a thousand bucks. You know, I'll give you a personal example. With with my programs, I know what a day-long program costs in, you know, if you're going to a big corporation to get somebody to overhaul. I also know what a sales leader costs to do a training, if it's to bring somebody in full-time. You know, you're talking about $150,000 to start, $200,000 to start if you have a business like this. Well, you could spend a fraction of that and let me spend a day with your team and equip them and give them frameworks. You could spend a fraction of that. I know what it costs to have a communication strategist full-time on your staff who helps your team communicate in meetings and things. You're paying them $150,000, $200,000 salary. With me, you bring me in for a fraction of that, and I'm going to give you the benefit of 20 years of doing this. And now you see, okay, well, for me to hire somebody full-time to communicate or to coach me on communications, nothing. But to bring me in on a fractional basis, now my value is appropriate to my pricing. But if I say I cost this much, if I cost, you know, $15,000 to come in and speak to your team, well, that's a lot of money. But if you say, I'm gonna give you $15,000 worth of sales training for a team that I've worked with for you know, with all these different companies and all these different industries, and you're getting that for $15,000, you don't have to pay for my healthcare, you don't have to pay for my dental, but you have to just get me in that room and give me some opportunities to work with your team. Now the value is like, well, this is nothing. It's stupid. It's all relative. So when this guy just threw the prices out there, I don't know what that's relative to. What would it be if I just went and got a facelift? What would it be like if I just maybe upgraded and changed my spouse and got a spouse that had worse eyes than my wife does, and she wouldn't notice my butt. I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know because I I don't know. I still don't know what the value was of the cream. I don't know. But I would dare say that a lot of your sales teams, they don't know the value of what you're bringing either. They're focused on the product and they're focused on the price. Ooh, we can get the price down and we can make the price lower. Well, I'm telling you, how do you show the value of what you're doing? How do you show that value? How do you communicate that value in a way that makes people go, ooh, I gotta get this. I'm chafing at the bit to get this. All right. So that's the second thing. People aren't interested as interested in the price as they are in the value. Third, interpret the results for them. Show the transformation. So this is where if you are able to give a sample. I I worked with a company and they they were selling a type of camera that would go on for hunting and outdoor stuff. Well, they would give samples and they would show you how the camera works. And they showed in some of the samples how that worked, and it was amazing. Like just showing that. You have to show the transformation. To interpret the results of that transformation. So, what this guy did right that he didn't take the open-netted goal with, is he gave me this cream. And he put it on. He didn't tell me anything to do with the cream. So I went back, and my wife, who is ruthless and made me four messages about this stupid tired eyes, she actually said, you know what? Your eyes look a little bit more reduced, like the swelling. And I thought it was lighting, but she says, No, maybe that cream is worth it. Well, he didn't let me interpret it. He didn't give me the before and the after. And in my programs, one of the things that I do is I film everyone doing everything. So if I was there for two days of training on communication, not just with your sales team, with your team, there'd be several times for everybody to speak and be filmed. I did this recently with a sales team, and I filmed them, and I filmed them doing it, and I filmed them at the beginning of the workshop, and then I filmed them at the end of the workshop, and I never showed them the delta between the two. That was a huge missed opportunity. And one of the things you have to realize is the greatest commodity that you're offering to sell is transformation. You want to demonstrate transformation. And the way to do that is by offering a sample of that transformation. So when I went to, I'll give you another sales example. I went to fleet feet. I buy my shoes at fleet feet because, in addition to having baggy eyes at my age, you also start to have back problems and knee problems. And so I walk a lot, I go to the gym and lift a lot, and I was starting to have these issues. Well, it's because of the way I was stepping and the types of shoes I was wearing. So they did a comparison where they let me walk around using the pair of shoes that I would have bought without their expert advice. And then they gave me the recommended shoe that fit my foot. Well, it was, I mean, the comparison was ridiculous. I felt like I wasn't even wearing a tennis shoe. My feet felt completely supported when they hit the ground. I felt no absorption of anything in my knees or in my lower calves. Everything felt like it was evenly distributed. And for the first time in maybe ever, I felt like I was walking in a healthy way. So I could not get my credit card out fast enough. I was like, I want this for the rest of my days. I don't care that I can't get discount shoes here. I don't care that I can't bargain shop and pick these up off of Walmart shelf. I am going to walk like this because I enjoy walking. They showed me the transformational try-on instantly. And I saw the difference. So when your sales teams are selling, one of the best ways that they can generate a quick sale or a quick second meeting, if that's what you're into, is by showing what the transformation would look like for that person if they use the product. And that's where you'd call this Alex Ramosy would call this a lead magnet. I'm really into Alex Ramosy right now. Something where you give something away for free, give them a sample, give them a try on, give them something, and expose the problem. So what that problem was revealed is I had this pain. I tried the shoes on, the pain was gone. The problem was revealed was all the shoes I had don't feature the kind of support that this shoe offered. And that moment of me trying it around in the store gave me that relief. Therefore, I need to buy that relief. You got it? So you want to interpret the results for them. You want to show that transformation. And in my workshops, I fail when I don't show the difference between point A and point Z of their day of working with me. Sell the transformation. Transformation sells. That's what people are looking for. They're looking for a transformation in their personal lives, they're looking for a transformation on their teams. They're looking for a transformation in how they do business. They're looking for a transformation in how their homes look. Transformation is where transaction becomes a reality. So I've said a lot. I hope it was funny. I hope it was helpful. But more importantly, I hope that as you're hearing this, you're getting that light bulb moment of, ooh, I can see this now with my team. I could see maybe why there's a problem with conversion there. I could see why maybe there's an issue of me getting them to have that second conversation, to have that second callback, if you will. And so I would encourage you to think this through with your team. If you'd like help with this, I am getting booked solid. My 2026 is really closing out strong, and I have a bunch of workshops I'm doing, individual coaching I'm doing. 2027 has already started scheduling, which is bonkers, but I've got four or five things already lined up for 2027. And I I know that 2027 is going to be a record year for me when it comes to being able to help people with their communication and with their sales. So if that is something that you need, my calendar link is on my show notes. I'd love to help you. I'd love to talk. I might, it might be one conversation, and I may not have an offer for you. I might just be able to help you with one thing to get you over whatever that hump is. Even if it's your own training of your sales team or your own communication, let me help you because I want to help you talk the same way that you lead. You have worked too hard and done too much to be going into your career with the type of communication that you have. So if you'll allow me, I want to elevate your communication to the next level. Thanks for taking the time to hang out with me, and we will see you next week. Keep those eyes non sleepy.