When I’m doing corporate sales training, I like to ask audiences a question that usually gets an interesting reaction. How many people do you have in your LinkedIn or Facebook network that you have actually met in person? For most people in the room, getting to 100 is easy. Then I ask how many of those 100 people they would trust to invest $20,000 of their hard-earned money.
The number drops very quickly. When I ask this question in rooms full of professionals, including financial advisors who often know each other, I commonly hear answers in the range of two or three people. We are willing to connect with a lot of people, share pieces of our lives with them and probably even say that we like them. Trusting them with an important business or financial decision requires something more.
That gap is the difference between likability and credibility, and it has become one of the most important issues in modern sales training. Likability matters because very few people are eager to spend time with someone they dislike. Credibility determines whether the buyer believes you have enough expertise, judgment and business understanding to help them make a decision that carries real consequences.
Credibility Has Become a Bigger Part of the Sale
A lot of sales training has historically concentrated on process, scripts, objection handling and product knowledge. Those things can still be useful, but they do not automatically give a salesperson enough weight to have a meaningful conversation with a senior executive. A salesperson can memorize every feature of a solution and still struggle to earn 20 minutes with a business leader because they do not understand that leader’s world.
You see this challenge in sales development teams that are expected to call senior decision-makers and book appointments. The salesperson may have a perfectly engineered script, a good cadence and a list of approved responses, yet the executive quickly realizes there is very little business substance behind the conversation. That creates a difficult environment for booking meetings because the prospect is being asked to give up time without receiving much value in return.
Business acumen changes that conversation. When a salesperson understands the customer’s industry, business model, pressures, market and even the customer’s customer, they can ask much more relevant questions. They can recognize context quickly and have a useful conversation even when the interaction is brief.
This is why I believe business acumen in sales needs to become a much larger part of sales development. We cannot prepare people exclusively to explain what our company does and then expect them to comfortably engage sophisticated buyers. They need enough understanding of business to participate in the conversation as a peer.
Buyers No Longer Need Us to Hold the Information
Think about what a realtor’s value proposition looked like years ago. They had access to information that the average buyer simply did not have, including property listings, neighbourhood knowledge and details that were difficult to find without being connected to the industry. Information itself was part of what made the salesperson valuable.
That has changed dramatically. A buyer can now sit at home and research properties, neighbourhoods, pricing and a large amount of market information before ever speaking with a realtor. The same shift has happened in automotive sales, technology and almost every other B2B or consumer category.
Buyers have become very good at educating themselves. They can compare products, read reviews, study competitors, watch demonstrations and arrive at a sales conversation having already formed strong opinions about what they want. In some situations, the customer may know more about a specific product feature than the salesperson sitting across from them.
This creates an important question for sales leaders: if access to information used to make the salesperson valuable, what makes the salesperson valuable now?
The answer increasingly comes down to the quality of the conversation. The customer needs somebody who can help them interpret information, examine their situation, see gaps they may have missed and work through what the right outcome should look like. That requires a different level of consultative selling skill than simply explaining features and benefits.
Move From Explaining Value to Creating Business Value
For years, salespeople were trained to explain value. We learned our features, translated them into benefits and built presentations designed to demonstrate why the customer should buy. That approach made more sense when the salesperson controlled a larger share of the information.
Today, the bigger opportunity is to create business value during the conversation itself. That means understanding enough about the customer’s situation to help them think through a challenge, risk or opportunity in a way that moves their thinking forward. The conversation should leave them with greater clarity than they had when it started.
This is a major part of trusted advisor selling. A trusted advisor has enough expertise to contribute while also having enough curiosity to explore the client’s reality before jumping to an answer. They can help the customer develop a custom outcome that fits the business instead of forcing every prospect through the same generic presentation.
Salespeople who can do this become much harder to replace. A product comparison can be found online, and an AI system can summarize features in seconds. A thoughtful business conversation that considers the customer’s context, challenges and desired future state requires judgment, curiosity and credibility.
Prescription Without Diagnosis Is Malpractice
One of the phrases I use frequently in sales training is, “Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.” Most of us who have sold for any length of time have violated this principle at some point. We book the meeting, open the screen share and start showing the prospect everything the product can do.
I sometimes call this the “show up and throw up” product demonstration. We are excited because we finally got the meeting, and we want to prove how much value our solution provides. The problem is that we may be explaining how the product will improve their business before we understand enough about the business to make that claim responsibly.
Imagine going to a doctor, mentioning a headache and immediately being handed a prescription without another question. You would probably expect the doctor to find out what happened, how long the headache has been there and whether there are other symptoms. Diagnosis creates the context required for a responsible recommendation.
A strong sales discovery process works the same way. We need to understand the customer’s situation before deciding which capabilities matter and what recommendation makes sense. That means asking questions about their goals, problems, current approach, risks, customers and the business consequences attached to the issue.
Better Sales Discovery Requires Better Thinking
This is where sales discovery training has to go deeper than giving people a list of questions to memorize. A list can provide structure, especially for someone early in their career, but great discovery depends on being able to listen to the answer and decide where the conversation should go next. The salesperson needs enough business understanding to recognize when something deserves deeper exploration.
A useful discovery conversation may start with the issue the customer believes they have. As the conversation develops, you may discover that the original issue is only part of the story. There could be a larger operational problem, an unrecognized risk or an opportunity that becomes visible only after the right questions are asked.
This is one reason senior executives respond differently to salespeople with strong business acumen. They can sense when somebody understands the broader implications of what they are discussing. They also recognize when the person across the table is simply waiting for an opening to return to the pitch.
The strongest B2B sales conversations feel collaborative because both parties are contributing to the thinking. The salesperson brings perspective, experience and questions, while the customer brings the internal context and knowledge of their organization. Together, they develop a clearer picture of what needs to happen next.
Product Knowledge Is Only Part of Sales Expertise
Product knowledge still matters. If you are going to recommend a solution, you should understand what it can do, where it fits and where it does not. The mistake is assuming product knowledge by itself creates sales expertise.
Sales expertise also includes understanding how the customer’s business works. It involves knowing the pressures facing their industry, the outcomes their leaders care about and the way a decision can affect different parts of the organization. That broader understanding is what allows a salesperson to connect a solution to a meaningful business outcome.
This should influence how we hire and develop salespeople. If we only assess their ability to follow a script, deliver a presentation and handle objections, we may build teams that perform well in training exercises and struggle in complex executive conversations. Professional sales training needs to develop strategic thinking alongside the mechanics of selling.
The goal is to have salespeople who can sit across from a customer and belong in the conversation. They understand enough to ask intelligent questions, recognize important information and contribute useful insights. Credibility starts to build because the customer experiences the salesperson as somebody who understands their world.
Review the Way Your Team Creates Credibility
1. Examine what your salespeople know about the customer’s business.
Ask your team to explain how your ideal customer’s business works without talking about your own product. Can they describe the customer’s market, business pressures, priorities and customers? If that conversation becomes difficult, you have identified an important area for development in your B2B sales training.
2. Listen to the first 15 minutes of your sales meetings.
Pay attention to how much time is spent asking, listening and exploring compared with presenting. Look at whether the salesperson is following the client’s answers into deeper business issues or simply moving through a predetermined checklist. This will tell you a lot about the quality of your current sales discovery process.
3. Review the questions your team asks senior executives.
Strong executive sales conversations require questions that demonstrate preparation and business understanding. Ask whether those questions would cause a senior leader to stop and think, or whether they could have been asked by any salesperson selling any solution. Better questions usually begin with better knowledge of the customer’s world.
4. Ask what value the salesperson creates before the proposal arrives.
Consider whether the customer gains a new insight, sees an issue more clearly or develops a stronger understanding of the outcome they want during the conversation. That is where consultative selling begins to separate itself from a traditional product pitch. If the only value appears after the salesperson opens the presentation, there is still an opportunity to move closer to the trusted advisor position.
