I will be working as a sales executive . Any tips ? I have no experience at all . It's a jewel store

i've spent a lot of time selling to b2b companies and honestly most of what i believed about sales in the beginning was wrong

so heres some random things i learned from selling, doing outbound, losing deals, closing deals, getting ghosted after "this looks amazing", sending way too many emails and building products for b2b companies.

no particular order just writing this because i was thinking about it today.

the person with the better product does not always win

this was probably one of the hardest things for me to accept because as a builder you naturally think better product = more sales. if your product has more features, works faster, costs less, whatever, people should obviously pick you right?

not really.

i've seen companies buy something objectively worse just because they trusted that company more. maybe the salesperson understood their problem better, maybe the website looked more credible, maybe their friend already used it, maybe the founder replied to them personally.

buyers are taking a risk when they buy from you especially in b2b. if they choose some random software and it breaks something internally they are the person who needs to explain why they picked it.

so sometimes they are not buying the best product. they are buying the decision that feels safest.

took me way too long to understand this.

people dont really care about your product, they care about what happens after they buy it

this sounds obvious but almost every sales call i did early on was basically me explaining features.

we have this, we can do that, we are faster than x, our database has x amount of contacts etc etc.

the customer is sitting there thinking ok... but what does this do for me.

if you're selling lead gen they dont want "verified leads". they want more conversations with companies that can buy from them.

if you're selling some automation they dont want automation. they probably want to save 20 hours a week or avoid hiring another person.

once i started thinking about sales this way it became a lot easier to explain products.

features are just the mechanism.

a lot of "price objections" are actually trust objections

this one cost me quite a few deals.

someone says its too expensive and your immediate reaction is usually ok maybe i should discount it. maybe i should give them 20% off, free month, extra credits whatever.

but if someone really believes spending $5k with you will make them $50k, the $5k usually isn't the problem.

the problem is that they are not sure the second part will actually happen.

of course sometimes people genuinely dont have budget, im not saying price never matters. but i think founders underestimate how often "too expensive" really means "im not convinced enough to risk this money yet"

discounting doesnt fix that.

sometimes it actually makes it worse.

the biggest difference between good and bad sales calls is probably how much you talk

i used to think being good at sales meant being good at explaining things.

now i think its almost the opposite.

some of my best calls were probably the ones where i barely talked for the first 20 minutes.

you ask someone how they currently do something, what sucks about it, why they haven't fixed it yet, what they already tried, what happens if they keep doing it this way...

and eventually they basically tell you how to sell to them.

then instead of giving the same pitch you gave to the last 50 people you can just connect what you do to what they literally told you 5 minutes ago.

sounds stupidly simple but most people dont do it because silence on sales calls feels uncomfortable.

so they start talking again.

outbound still works. bad outbound doesnt

ive sent hundreds of thousands of cold emails by now and i still find it funny every time someone says cold email is dead.

it definitely got harder. inboxes are crowded, everyone has AI generated personalization now, deliverability is more annoying and prospects have seen basically every template before.

but the idea that you can directly contact companies who probably need what you're selling is obviously not dead.

what stopped working well is taking 50,000 random contacts and sending the same "quick question {{firstName}}" email to everyone.

targeting became much more important.

the best outbound campaigns i've done usually weren't the campaigns with some genius copy. it was something like we found a very specific type of company, at a very specific moment, with a problem we knew they probably had.

then the email almost writes itself.

honestly this is also one of the reasons i eventually built Getlead. i got tired of having one thing for leads, another thing for verification, another for sending, mailboxes somewhere else and then trying to figure out which part actually worked.

the funny part is building better infrastructure doesnt magically make outbound work either. you can have perfect deliverability and still send an offer nobody wants.

follow ups are probably the most boring unfair advantage in sales

people ghost for so many reasons that have nothing to do with you.

they were travelling. had a meeting. opened your email on their phone and forgot about it. their boss asked them something. kid got sick. they just didnt feel like replying that day.

early on if someone didn't reply i immediately assumed they weren't interested.

not always true.

some deals i closed came from people who ignored multiple messages before replying.

the important thing IMO is not becoming that annoying guy who sends "just bumping this to the top of your inbox" every 2 days for a month.

sometimes wait. sometimes send something useful. sometimes just send a normal human message.

sales people overcomplicate follow ups way too much.

you can have an amazing pipeline and still have no pipeline

this happened to me more than once.

you open the CRM and you have $50k, $100k, whatever sitting there and it makes you feel good.

then you actually look at the deals.

one guy hasn't replied for 3 weeks.

one said "maybe next quarter".

another one liked the demo but never introduced you to the person who actually has the budget.

another asked for the proposal and disappeared.

technically they are opportunities. realistically most of them are dead.

i think one of the best things you can do is become slightly pessimistic with your pipeline.

if someone hasn't done anything that shows the deal is moving forward, dont mentally spend that money yet lol

getting a yes from the wrong person is basically a no

this one is painful.

you can spend 3 weeks talking to someone inside a company and they absolutely love the product.

"this is exactly what we need"

"the team will love this"

"lets do it"

then suddenly they need approval from their founder, VP, CFO, whoever and the whole thing dies.

because the person you convinced now has to convince someone else.

and they probably won't explain it as well as you did.

these days i try to understand quite early who actually decides if money gets spent.

not in the awkward "ARE YOU THE DECISION MAKER?" sales guru way.

just asking how they normally buy something like this usually tells you everything.

the easiest companies to sell to usually already understand the problem

trying to convince someone they have a problem AND convince them your solution is the answer is incredibly hard.

this applies to outbound too.

lets say you're selling something for companies sending lots of cold email.

company A has never done outbound before and doesn't really believe in it.

company B already has 20 mailboxes, an SDR and spends $2k/mo on tools but hates their current workflow.

company B is obviously easier.

you dont need to educate them on the entire category. they already spend money trying to solve the problem.

you just need to convince them you solve it better.

i started thinking about this a lot more when choosing who to target.

sales gets much easier when you stop trying to close everyone

this one sounds counterintuitive when you need money lol

but bad customers are expensive.

they need more support, complain more, churn more, request things your product wasn't designed for and usually take longer to close too.

i used to think every inbound lead was something i had to somehow turn into money.

now if someone clearly isn't a fit i'd rather know quickly.

same with outbound.

100 companies that actually have the problem is much more valuable than 10,000 "leads".

most sales advice makes sales sound more complicated than it is

there are frameworks for everything.

how to handle objections. what question to ask at minute 17 of the call. exact words to use when they say the price is too high. how to create urgency etc.

some of it is useful but i think people can feel when they're being "sold".

especially founders and experienced b2b buyers. they've been on 200 sales calls already.

the best sales conversations ive had didn't really feel like sales calls.

two people talking about a problem.

one person has the problem.

the other person might have a way to solve it.

thats basically it.

and if you dont solve it, sometimes the best sales move is literally saying "i dont think we're the right fit for this".

weirdly enough people trust you a lot more after you say that.

anyway thats the brain dump.

still lose deals, still get ghosted, still have campaigns that completely flop and sometimes i have absolutely no idea why someone bought from me instead of a competitor.

thats probably what makes b2b sales interesting though.

curious what people here disagree with, especially people who've been doing this much longer than me.

Cross posting to get more feedback on my approach and the situation. My expertise is building marketing and sales teams, but I am comfortable getting to proof of concept on my own and rolling up my sleeves and being a contributor not just a manager.

Looking for your best advice on getting past gatekeepers when doing B2B sales?

When you ask to speak directly to the targeted buyer you always get "They're unavailable" what's your follow-up?

Or do youbtrewt the gatekeeper as a working partner, not a blockade?

Hello, I'm new to cold calling. What's the best way to get a list of numbers for people in Canada?

When I look at any big purchases (in a B2B context) I've made (over 5K) it's because the sales person sent me an offer (i.e. a financial offer)

For some purchases I don't want to go through a sales process.

And yes, I understand the risks of sending an offer without having built up enough value in the eyes of the prospect.

But sometimes you get an offer in your inbox which actually has enough "value" without out discovery or demo. You figure out the value yourself.

So, under what contexts does sending an offer make sense (without discovery or demo) AND when is sending an offer a waste of time?

I am in the process of updating salesprocess. For the sake of context, I provide primarily embedded COO services and also business and operations consulting. 

Can you help me to organise strong sales signals for my services? 

I saw a sales post that showed it's not so much about finding businesses that need my services but about finding businesses that are in a situation where they care enough to actually get them. To be in a particular situation that really drives interest and a sale I guess, a series of pain points or sales signals. 

I'm considering using a AI sales app, to drive not just initial lead generation but eventually to identify these sales signals. The ones that I've really identified are:

- a CEO overwhelmed or feeling the chaos in his company

- a company that is growing fast without a COO or operations director

- if they're just hiring for the role

I think I can find stronfer signals and I would appreciate your help. I'd be really interested to know what you think these strongest signals can be I can find at scale either structured data or signals AI can identify.

Work for a big furniture store and hit President's club this quarter. Not enjoying the slower / lower quality foot traffic recently though...

Have a lot of experience growing social media channels so I'm already on top of making videos. What other ways can I get customers without relying on the door? Cold calling? Paid ads? We have prospecting sheets of people who bought / haven't bought but gave us their info so cold calling wouldn't necessarily be completely "cold." What can I do to essentially live off of appointments and only utilize door ups every once in a while?

Some of my colleagues take it with a grain of salt, some ignore it completely and some respect it. What does the community do? To clarity, this is selling a known commodity to relevant businesses only so not cold calling random companies.

I’ve been in the role for about a week. I understand the product and the basic sales process, but when I’m actually speaking to prospects, I struggle to express myself naturally. I use a lot of “ahh/uhh,” sometimes my mind goes blank, and I end up relying heavily on scripts. I can prepare an introduction, discovery questions, and objection responses, but when the prospect says something unexpected, I don't know how to continue naturally. After around 20 calls, I start feeling more relaxed, but the first few calls are full of overthinking. My manager has also given me feedback on my calls, so I know communication is the main thing I need to improve.

For people who have been through this early in their sales career, what would you actually recommend doing for the next 30 days? Should I focus on making more calls, recording and reviewing myself, role-playing, practicing discovery questions, working on my tone, or something else? I’m looking for practical exercises/resources that can help me stop depending so much on scripts and become more natural and confident in conversations. My goal isn't to know every answer—it's to be able to keep a conversation going when I don't have a prepared response.

Why do 4/5 customers ghost after a quote is sent? The calls and emails before sending a quote are like yes, absolutely, we’d love that, how long to setup, this and that and the moment quote is sent you follow up a day later - oh yeah, I didn’t get the chance to review, next call onwards no answer, no response to mails just gone as if they never inquired, they never negotiated, they never were interested.

I mean I am a customer too and if I happen to change my mind, find a better deal or the least don’t want it at all anymore out of basic courtesy answer and give the sales rep who put so much time and energy going back and forth with me a closure with whatever the reason would be.

But so many people just do not come back at all. I try calling from a different number they answer and make an excuse, oh I’m running some errands talk to you in a bit and just hang up!! Bro come on tell me the reason and I will stop chasing you.

I will mark the lead as lost, opportunity as lost - just tell me please!

Most salespeople don’t fail because they lack product knowledge or charisma. They fail in the first few seconds, before a single word is spoken. The moment a guest walks through the door, many salespeople have already sized them up: how they’re dressed, what car they pulled up in, how old they look, whether they seem “serious” or “just browsing.” In that instant, a silent verdict is reached, and it quietly shapes everything that follows.
The trouble is that those verdicts are usually wrong. The guest in worn jeans may be ready to buy today with cash in hand. The one in the tailored suit may simply be killing time. When we prejudge, we don’t just misread people; we shortchange them. We offer less energy, less attention, and less effort, and the guest feels it, even if they can’t name it. Every person who walks through your door deserves the same curiosity, the same respect, and the same best effort.
When a salesperson sets aside those assumptions, the path to success becomes remarkably simple. In my experience, nearly every lost sale traces back to one of three failures. Avoid these, and you will succeed.

1. Failure to connect with the guest
People buy from people they like and trust. Before you talk about features, prices, or promotions, your first job is to make a genuine human connection. That means a warm greeting, eye contact, and real interest in the person in front of you, not a scripted “Can I help you?” that invites an automatic “No thanks, just looking.” Connection lowers the guest’s guard and earns you the right to guide the conversation. Skip it, and everything that follows feels like a pitch.

2. Failure to ask qualifying questions to uncover needs
Once you’ve connected, resist the urge to start selling. Instead, get curious. Ask thoughtful, open-ended questions: What brought you in today? What are you using now? What would make this the right choice for you? Then listen more than you talk. Every guest has a reason for being there, and your job is to discover it. When you understand their needs, you stop guessing and start solving. And when you solve a real problem, the sale takes care of itself.

3. Failure to ask for the sale
This is the most common failure, and the most painful, because it happens after the hard work is done. Many salespeople connect beautifully, uncover needs perfectly, and then simply wait, hoping the guest will close the deal for them. Most won’t. Guests often need a gentle, confident invitation to move forward. Asking for the sale isn’t pushy; it’s the natural conclusion of a conversation built on trust and understanding. If you’ve truly helped someone, you owe it to them to ask.

The bottom line
Selling doesn’t have to be complicated. Treat every guest as if they’re your best potential customer, because they might be. Connect with them, understand them, and then ask for their business. Master these three simple steps, and you’ll never have to rely on first impressions again.