Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Here's a question that keeps salespeople up at night: How do you build a powerful personal brand without stepping on your company's toes? That's the question Taylor Deadrick asked me during a recent live event. Taylor works for Insperity (a fantastic company that handles all our HR and payroll at Sales Gravy, by the way), and she wanted to know how to establish her own brand while staying aligned with her employer. If you've ever felt this tension, you're not alone. The fear of conflicting with your company's brand holds too many salespeople back from building the authority they need to win more deals. Let me show you how to build a personal brand that actually amplifies your company's message instead of competing with it. The Only Real Conflict You Need to Worry About Here's the brutal truth: The only way you'll conflict with your company's brand is if you assert that your own opinion is that of your employer, or what you're posting, saying, or writing conflicts with their core values, their marketing message, or the way they go to market. That's it. That's the line. If you start trying to speak for your company or post things that contradict their values, you've got a problem. But if everything you do supports those core values, you're going to be just fine. Think about it this way: Your company hired you because you aligned with their mission. Now your job is to amplify that mission through your own authentic voice and expertise. The mistake most salespeople make is thinking their personal brand needs to be separate from or independent of their company. Wrong. Your personal brand should be the human face of your company's value proposition. Your Personal Brand Is Bigger Than Your Logo Your personal brand isn't just what you post on LinkedIn. It's not your profile picture or your witty headline. Your personal brand is the confidence you show when you hop on a microphone and ask a tough question. It's your smile and the way you treat people. It's whether you're kind, whether you invest in yourself, whether you show up with expertise that actually helps people solve problems. Your personal brand is the human being who walks into businesses every day and shows up for those businesses. That's the most important part of your brand, and that's the part that builds trust and causes people to buy you. Everything else (your LinkedIn posts, your content, your online presence) is just an extension of that core identity. Authority: The Secret Weapon of Personal Branding When I think about building a personal brand, I think about one word: authority. Authority is your expertise. It's what you know that helps other people win. And here's the beautiful thing: When you build authority in your space, you're not competing with your company's brand. You're reinforcing it. Let's use Taylor's situation as an example. She works with small and medium-sized businesses, helping them grow by taking HR and payroll off their plate so they can focus on what matters. That's exactly why we came to Insperity in the first place. If Taylor builds her authority around understanding the problems small business owners face, if she becomes known for helping companies break through growth barriers, if she consistently shares insights about the challenges her buyers deal with every single day, that authority doesn't conflict with Insperity. It amplifies everything they stand for. When you focus on your expertise and how you help people, your personal brand becomes a magnet. You create leads. When prospects research you before a meeting, they see someone they actually want to talk to. You're building trust before you ever shake hands. The Five S Framework for Building Authority In my book The LinkedIn Edge, I walk through what I call the Five S's for building your personal brand, especially on LinkedIn. This framework keeps you aligned with your company while establishing your unique authority. The key is sending the right message to the marketplace about the expertise you bring, your authority in solving specific problems, and how you can help people win. When you focus there, everything else falls into place. Your content should showcase the patterns you're seeing with your buyers, the problems you solve consistently, and simple frameworks they can use right away. That's what creates familiarity. That's what warms up the room before you ever make a call. Think of LinkedIn as your familiarity engine. When you show up consistently with practical insights, every outreach gets easier and every conversation becomes more productive. Know Your Company's Social Media Policy Inside and Out Before you post a single piece of content, take a hard look at your company's social media policy. Understand what they allow you to say and what they don't. Know those boundaries cold. This isn't about limiting yourself. It's about operating with confidence. When you know exactly where the guardrails are, you can create boldly within them. Most companies have pretty straightforward policies: Don't share confidential information, don't speak on behalf of the company without authorization, and stay aligned with core values. Follow those rules, and you'll be fine. The salespeople who get in trouble are the ones who never bothered to read the policy in the first place. Your Brand Is What You Do, Not Just What You Post Here's what too many people forget: Your personal brand is built in the trenches, not just on social media. It's built in every discovery call where you ask better questions than your competitors. It's built in every proposal where you demonstrate that you truly understand your buyer's world. It's built in every follow-up where you add value instead of just checking in. The online stuff matters, but it only works if it's backed up by real expertise and genuine care for your customers. You can't fake authority. You earn it by doing the work, studying your industry, understanding your buyers, and your content. When you combine that real-world expertise with a consistent online presence, you become unstoppable. You're not just another rep. You're the person buyers want to work with. The Bottom Line Stop worrying about conflicting with your company's brand. Instead, focus on amplifying it through your unique voice and expertise. Your personal brand should make your company look good. It should attract the right buyers. It should build trust before you ever pick up the phone. Stay aligned with your company's core values. Know their social media policy. Focus your content on your specific expertise and the problems you solve. Show up consistently, both online and in person. That's how you build a personal brand that becomes a magnet. That's how you make every conversation easier and every deal more likely to close. And that's how you become the salesperson everyone wants to buy from. Your brand is your authority. Now go build it. Want to learn the complete system for building authority on LinkedIn? Check out Jeb's latest book, The LinkedIn Edge, where he breaks down the Five S framework and shows you exactly how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a lead-generating machine.

This Money Monday Sales Gravy podcast episode is special because it kicks off our 20th season! It’s hard to believe that we’ve been producing the Sales Gravy continuously for 20 years. Over the last 20 years, thanks to you—our incredible audience—we’ve consistently ranked as the #1 most listened to sales podcast in markets all over the world. I remember my first podcast episode all those years ago, produced with a microphone I bought at Guitar Center and recorded under a blanket for sound suppression. Today, we produce our podcast in professional studios at Sales Gravy and have a full production team on staff to ensure we are giving you the highest quality sound possible.  What hasn’t changed is my unwavering focus on making the complex simple by cutting through the noise, eliminating the fluff, and giving you the basics and fundamentals that actually work in the real world. We’ve got a ton of new episodes and bonus content coming your way, so be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and listen every week.  Sales Professionals Must Have Goals to be Successful Your personal goals are the aspirations that drive you, inspire you, and push you through the tough days. These goals are essential to helping you maintain sales discipline throughout your sales year. When developing personal goals, I break them down into three buckets: To-Have Goals These are the things you want to acquire or buy. Whether it’s a house, a new car, or building up your savings, to-have goals are about acquiring something that enhances your life. To-Be Goals These are about evolving into the person you want to become. Maybe you want to be a sales manager, or if you’re a manager, you want to be a director or VP of sales. You might want to go back to school for a degree or an MBA. Or you want to be a better spouse, a better leader, or a better peer. Maybe you want to be a President’s club winner or be recognized as an expert in your industry—whatever it is, to-be goals help you level up as a person and a professional. To-Do Goals These are experience goals. Think about experiences that create lifelong memories—maybe you want to travel somewhere special or take on a meaningful project or hobby you’ve always dreamed about. Four Reasons Why Goals Matter in Sales Number one, goals massively increase the likelihood that you’ll actually achieve the things you want. Speaking your goal out loud, writing it down, and being intentional about it has a powerful psychological effect. Number two, goals make life meaningful. It’s unbelievably fulfilling to look back and see what you accomplished—how far you’ve come over the course of a year, five years, or a decade. Number three, we work in a tough, competitive profession, and it’s just plain satisfying to put your commission checks, bonuses, and hard-won earnings toward something that improves your life or the lives of the people you love. But the biggest reason to set goals—especially in sales—is that the sales profession is hard work and it can be brutal.  It’s loaded with rejection. At every turn, we face potential “nos,” whether it’s prospecting calls, asking for next steps, pushing to level up to a decision-maker, or closing the deal. We even face internal rejection when we try to sell a complex deal internally to our own company or get approval for special pricing. Rejection is everywhere, and the fear of rejection—or avoiding it—is the number one reason salespeople fail to perform. Add to that the grind: making call after call, stuffing data into the CRM, pushing through proposals, handling endless follow-ups, and selling becomes tedious, hard, rejection-dense work. For this reason, it requires discipline to stay on track and keep grinding day after day and month after month over the course of the sales year. But here’s the rub: discipline can wane, especially if we’re not hyper-focused on a bigger prize. Goals Give You the Discipline to Do the Hard Things I want you to pay attention to this next part because understanding the real definition of discipline is critical.  Discipline is sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. Human nature wants easy. We’d rather that customers call us than have to chase them. We’d rather deals close themselves than invest hours into multi-step follow-ups. We don’t want to face that “no.” But success in sales is paid for in advance, with facing rejection and hard work. Therefore, if you don’t have a clear, compelling reason—something you want most—it’s easy to cave in and take the easy route instead of doing what really needs to be done. This is the reason why having a strong set of personal goals is crucial for sales professionals. You need that powerful “why” to keep grinding when the going gets tough. When the pipeline’s not as full as you’d like or you’re hitting roadblocks, you need something more important than convenience to drag you back into the fight. A Tactical System for Setting Winning Goals Let’s jump into the tactics for actually doing this. If you’ve gone through any kind of SMART goal-setting course, some of this may sound familiar. But these basics are timeless and indispensable. To set effective goals, you need to ask and answer five basic questions: What Do You Want? Sounds simple, but for a lot of us, it’s not. We’re so busy scrolling through social media, bingeing on TikTok, or juggling daily distractions that we never pause to ask, “What do I really want from my life?” So step one is to get specific. Define it. When Do You Want It? Because we’re talking about next year’s personal goals, let’s keep them within a 12-month horizon. But any truly effective goal requires a deadline or target date—otherwise, it’s just a pipe dream. When you have a hard date, it creates urgency and focus. Is It Attainable? Be honest with yourself. If all your goals are ridiculously ambitious, you’ll burn out or give up once it’s clear you’re not making meaningful progress. Stretch goals are great—big, hairy, audacious goals will push you—but balance those with goals you can realistically achieve. How Bad Do You Want It? This is the ultimate question. If your goal doesn’t fire you up, if it’s not something you’d move mountains to achieve, you won’t push through the tough days. Remember, discipline means sacrificing what you want now for what you want most. If the desire isn’t there, the sacrifices won’t be made. How Are You Going to Get There? These are your steps to success—your system, your process, your roadmap. As James Clear says in Atomic Habits, you don’t rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems. The idea is simple: if you have a crystal-clear process for what you need to do daily, weekly, and monthly, you’ll keep moving toward the goal—even when life gets hectic. This is where your personal business plan and your personal goals intersect. For instance, if your to-do or to-have goal requires additional income—maybe you need a bigger commission check to afford that new pool or a bucket-list vacation—then you have to hit your sales targets. This means building a discipline system that ensures you’re prospecting enough, qualifying enough opportunities, following up diligently, and negotiating effectively. Without a system and personal business plan, you are more likely to get random results. Stop Now and Build Your Goal Sheet Sit in silence. Turn off the noise, get away from distractions, and grab a notebook and pen. Write down what you want, when you want it, if it’s attainable, how bad you want it, and how you plan to get there. Sketch it all out—just let the ideas flow. Once you’ve got it all down, build a formal goal sheet. Yes, I’m talking about physically writing it out. There’s tremendous power in seeing your goals in black and white, or printing them out and pinning them above your desk. Countless studies show that written goals are far more likely to be realized than goals that just bounce around in your head. This goal sheet is your personal roadmap—put it into your personal business plan so everything stays in one place. Learn how to set winning goals and build your personal Goal Sheet in Jeb Blount’s comprehensive course: The Essentials of Setting Winning Goals

Do you plan to hit your sales goals, or just hope you will? You set goals in January. By March, they are forgotten. It's because most salespeople confuse wanting something with planning for it.  “I want to close more deals this year.” That is not a goal. That is a wish. “I want to be better at prospecting.” Still not a goal. Just a vague intention that leads nowhere. Real sales goals require a system. Not motivation. Not inspiration. A repeatable process that turns big numbers into daily actions you can actually execute. This four-step sales goal planning system turns annual quotas into weekly, executable actions that salespeople can control and measure. Why Most Sales Goals Fail Before February Most salespeople treat goal-setting like a New Year’s resolution. They write something down, feel good about it for a week, then watch it disappear under the weight of quota pressure and full calendars. Three things kill sales goals before they have a chance: Lack of specificity. Your brain cannot attach to something vague. There is no finish line, no way to measure progress, and no emotional connection to the outcome. No breakdown. Big numbers paralyze you. Looking at an annual quota feels impossible. Your brain shuts down. You don’t know where to start, so you don’t start at all. Zero accountability. Goals that live only in your head are easy to abandon. There is no consequence for missing them because nobody, including you, is really tracking them. Research consistently shows that people who write down specific, challenging goals and track them perform significantly better than those who rely on vague intentions or hope. The difference between hitting your number and missing it is having a systematic approach to sales goal planning and the discipline to execute it. Step 1: Identify Your Major Milestones Big goals overwhelm you. When you stare at “close $1.5 million this year,” your brain checks out. It feels too big, too far away, and too abstract. The first step in effective sales goal planning is breaking that number into key checkpoints. These milestones tell you whether you are on track or falling behind. For a $1.5 million annual goal: Q1: $375K Q2: $375K Q3: $375K Q4: $375K Now you are not chasing $1.5 million. You are chasing $375K this quarter. Still significant, but manageable. Take it further. What does $375K mean for your pipeline? If your average deal size is $50K, you need eight closed deals per quarter. If your close rate is 25 percent, you need 32 qualified opportunities in your pipeline each quarter to close those eight deals. Suddenly, that intimidating annual number becomes a concrete monthly target of roughly 11 qualified opportunities. You cannot control whether a deal closes, but you can control how many qualified opportunities you put in your pipeline. That is the number you chase. Step 2: List Your Specific Tasks Milestones tell you where you need to be. Tasks tell you how to get there. These numbers will vary based on your market, deal size, and conversion rates. The point is forcing your goal all the way down to weekly actions you can control. This step requires brutal honesty about the activities that actually generate results in your sales process. If you need 11 qualified opportunities per month and your prospecting-to-opportunity conversion rate is 10 percent, you need 110 prospecting conversations monthly. What does that look like in weekly tasks? 30 outbound calls 15 LinkedIn connection requests with personalized messages 10 follow-up emails to lukewarm prospects 3 referral conversations Assign realistic timeframes to each task. Making 30 calls doesn’t require four hours. It requires 45 minutes of focused effort. Block the time, make the calls, move on. The more specific you get, the less room there is for excuses. You either completed the tasks or you did not. You are either on pace or you are behind. If you cannot list the specific weekly tasks required to hit your goal, you do not have a sales goal. You have a hope. Step 3: Consider Obstacles and Resources Every goal has obstacles waiting to derail it. Ignoring them does not make them disappear. Identify what will try to stop you, then plan around it. The biggest time killers in sales are rarely mysterious. Meetings that don’t move deals forward. Prospects who will never buy but keep you engaged. Administrative tasks that someone else should handle. Reorganizing your CRM instead of filling it with opportunities. Here is how to expose them. Track your time for one week. Write down every activity in 30-minute blocks. No editing. No judgment. Just honest data. At the end of the week, categorize everything: Income-producing activities like prospecting, discovery, and closing Income-supporting activities like proposals, follow-up, and research Waste, which is everything else Most salespeople discover they spend less than 30 percent of their time on income-producing activities. If that is you, you just found out why you are not hitting your goals. Once you know where your time actually goes, you can protect the activities that matter. Block prospecting time before meetings start. Batch administrative work. Decline meetings where your presence adds no value. Now identify resource gaps. What do you need that you don’t have? Skills you need to develop. Tools that would improve your results. Support from leadership to open doors with key accounts. Find these gaps early. Discovering you lack a critical skill in November is too late. Step 4: Stay Flexible Without Lowering the Goal Sales goal planning requires flexibility in tactics, not flexibility in commitment. Markets shift. Buyers change. Your original plan may need adjustment. That does not mean the destination changes. Review your goals monthly and let the data guide you. Ask three questions: Am I on track What’s working What’s not working If something is working, do more of it. If something isn’t working, adjust your approach. For example, your data might show inconsistent execution, poor list quality, or weak follow-up. The answer is not abandoning foundational activities like cold calling. The answer is tightening your process, improving targeting, or reinforcing outreach with disciplined follow-up. Flexibility means adjusting how you execute, not lowering the standard because the work is harder than expected. Salespeople who hit ambitious goals stay flexible in their methods and uncompromising about the outcome. Monthly reviews keep you honest. They prevent you from wasting months on ineffective activity before realizing you are off track. Execute Your Sales Goal Planning System Take one goal right now. Write it down with a specific number and a deadline. Break it into three to five milestones. List the weekly tasks required. Identify your two biggest obstacles and the resources you need to overcome them. Then execute. Review weekly. Adjust monthly. Never stop driving toward the outcome. This system works because it eliminates ambiguity. You know what needs to happen this week. Obstacles don’t blindside you because you planned for them. You aren’t following a broken plan for six months because you built in regular reviews. While other salespeople hope for a good year, you will be executing a plan. While they react to whatever fires pop up, you will be proactively driving toward measurable outcomes. The difference between salespeople who hit their goals and those who do not is not talent or luck. It is having a systematic process for turning big goals into daily actions and the discipline to follow through when motivation fades. Sales goals don’t fail because you lack desire—they fail because the plan isn’t specific enough to execute. Download the FREE Goal Planning Guide to turn your sales goals into results.

Here's a question that keeps salespeople up at night: How do you ask for more compensation when you're getting competitive external job offers without sounding like you're issuing an ultimatum? That's the question posed by Brady from Arkansas. Brady's been getting legitimate job offers from recruiters, and he's wondering how to leverage these opportunities into better compensation at his current company without burning bridges or coming across as disloyal. If you've ever found yourself in this position, you know it's a delicate dance. You want to be paid what you're worth, but you also don't want to destroy the relationships and goodwill you've built. So how do you navigate this conversation? The Right Way to Have the Conversation If you're getting external job offers from legitimate companies with strong brands, the key is in how you frame the conversation with your boss. Here's the approach: "I really like working here, and I want to stay at this company. I love it. But I've got another company out there that's a good company. They're a great brand, they're well known, and they're making this job offer to me at a significantly higher level of compensation. It's hard for me to say no to that. I feel like I need to bring this to you before I make a decision because I like working here." Notice what you're NOT saying. You're not walking in with an ultimatum saying, "If you don't give me this, I'm leaving." Instead, you're saying, "I want to stay here. I like it here. I'm just in a situation where they're offering me enough that it's turning my head and I'm looking their way." This approach keeps the door open for a productive conversation about what might be possible without threatening your current employer or damaging your relationship. When Loyalty Actually Matters Now, before you go schedule that meeting with your boss, you need to ask yourself a hard question: Do you owe this company some loyalty? If you were down on your luck, lost a job, and they came along and gave you something that saved you, you probably owe them some loyalty for that. Not forever, but there's a little bit of honor in not just jumping to the next place immediately. You also need to think about your resume. If you've just got there and a year later you're jumping to another place, that's on your resume. And believe it or not, even in today's world, that still means something. I won't hire people who jump from job to job every year. I don't care how good they are because they're probably going to jump again. So think long term: Am I demonstrating to a future employer that I'm worth investing more money in? The answer is yes when you gave them three years of your life, performed at a really high level, and now you're going to leverage that to go level up elsewhere. Speaking Your Boss's Language Here's what most salespeople get wrong when asking for more money: They forget to speak the language their boss understands. If you walk into your sales leader's office and say, "I want to make more money," you know what they're going to tell you? "Go sell more." And they're right. If you've got a great compensation plan with no limit on how much commission you can make, the answer is simple: crank out more sales. So before you ask for more base salary, ask yourself: Do I have a limit on how much commission I can make? If the answer is no, then your first conversation should be about getting bigger opportunities. Try this approach: "I can sell. I'm hitting numbers, but I'm not making the money I want. What can you do to give me bigger accounts, bigger opportunities, bigger customers? Give me better leads. What can you do to get me in a situation where I can earn more?" This is speaking the boss's language. You're showing that you want to produce more, not just get paid more for the same work. If you get shut down in that situation, then you have another conversation. The Commission vs. Base Salary Play If you're a baller and you've proven you can sell, here's a move most salespeople never consider when negotiating compensation: Ask for a higher commission percentage instead of a higher base salary. I honestly don't care about base. I think a base matters when you're getting started, and it's nice to have, but I would much rather have a higher commission percentage than a higher base. Here's how you position it: "In the open market, I can take a similar job and make $400,000. I want to make the same thing here. Now there's two ways we could do this. One is that you can increase my base salary. Two is you give me a higher commission rate, and I think the commission rate should be this. I think I'm worth that." What you're basically saying is that your cost of sales is going to be variable. They only pay you if you sell it, so their carrying costs stay the same. In my company, the people who don't take a base salary make more than double in commission what people who do take a base salary bring home. There's a massive difference because the people saying "pay me more commission" are saying "I'm willing to put skin in the game in order to make more." Now, this doesn't work if you're at a massive company with a thousand salespeople and rigid HR policies. But if you work for a smaller organization where people can make decisions, have an honest conversation around this approach. You might even propose a tiered structure: "You can pay me your base commission on everything up to the quota you gave me. But once I cross that quota, I want my commission to roll up so that if I get over this number, the rate scales." That's a conversation most entrepreneurial leaders will entertain because it's putting your money where your mouth is. What Money Can't Buy Here's the thing most people miss when they're chasing the next big paycheck: There's always money out there you can chase. You have an obligation to yourself and your family to make as much as you possibly can in sales. But there's also the value of working in a place that values you. There's more than just the money. There's the freedom, the flexibility, and the opportunity to be part of something that gives you purpose. I had somebody come to me recently and ask this question, and I said, "This job that you're moving to that's going to pay you all this money, suddenly you're going to have someone who's micromanaging and telling you what to do every single day. In your current role, you're not making as much money, but you call the shots on your day every single day. Nobody even messes with you. Are you willing to sign up for that?" They said their wife told them the exact same thing. Maybe that's a sign that having the freedom and flexibility is more valuable than making a lot of money but being miserable because everything you do is being micromanaged. The Bottom Line When it's time to ask for more money, remember these principles: Bring the conversation to your boss before making a decision. Frame it as wanting to stay, not threatening to leave. Consider what you owe in loyalty. If they gave you a chance when you needed one, factor that into your decision. Speak your boss's language. Ask for bigger opportunities before asking for more base pay. Consider the commission play. If you're confident in your abilities, asking for higher commission rates can be more lucrative than base salary increases when looking at total compensation. Weigh the intangibles. Money isn't everything if you're trading freedom and fulfillment for a micromanaged existence. The best compensation conversations happen when you approach them with confidence, gratitude, and a clear understanding of your value. That's how you get paid what you're worth without burning bridges along the way. Want to learn more about leveraging your personal brand to create more career opportunities? Check out Jeb's newest book, The LinkedIn Edge, and discover how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a powerful career and sales tool.

Is your sales strategy built around how buyers should behave—or how they actually behave? Imagine walking into a store and seeing a shirt for $50. Fine. Unremarkable. You might buy it, you might not. Now imagine seeing that same shirt with a tag that reads: $100 NOW $50. Suddenly, you're interested. You found a deal. You beat the system. You're a hero. Same price. Same shirt. Completely different emotional response. That psychological gap between logic and emotion cost JCPenney roughly $1 billion and offers one of the most important lessons in sales psychology you'll ever learn: people don't buy with logic—they buy with emotion and justify with logic later. The Fair and Square Disaster In 2012, JCPenney hired Ron Johnson as CEO. Johnson was a retail rock star, the architect behind Apple Store's legendary success. He walked into JCPenney and saw chaos: endless coupons, manufactured "original prices," and constant sales cycles. His solution? Kill it all. Johnson launched "Fair and Square"—a radically transparent pricing model. No games. No coupons. No inflated prices marked down. Just one everyday low price on everything. That $100 shirt marked down to $50? Now it was simply $50. Honest. Logical. Clean. The market's response was brutal. Within one year, sales dropped 25%. The company lost nearly $1 billion. Stock price went into freefall. Johnson was fired. What Johnson Got Wrong About Sales Psychology Johnson made a catastrophic assumption: he believed customers were rational economic actors who would reward transparency and honesty. He was dead wrong. For decades, JCPenney's customers had been playing a game. They clipped coupons, timed sales, scrutinized flyers, and planned shopping trips around promotions. The weekly coupon wasn't just a discount—it was a ritual. Their insider advantage, their badge of savvy shopping honor. Johnson stripped away their emotional satisfaction and replaced it with sterile efficiency. Without the "$100 now $50" comparison, the flat $50 price lost all psychological weight. No thrill. No victory. No story to share. Same price. Different feeling. The Sales Psychology Principle You're Ignoring Loss aversion is twice as powerful as gain motivation. Your prospects don't just want to gain something—they want to feel like they won, like they're in control, like they made a smart decision that will impress their boss. When you strip away their buying process, when you force them into your "more efficient" workflow without their input, they don't see the gain. They experience loss. You've taken away their control, their ritual, their power, their role as the hero. In sales, that feeling is deadly. Your Customers Have Rituals Too Think about your best accounts. What do they actually value? It's probably not your features or your ROI calculator. It's the rep they've worked with for years. It's the quarterly business review they rely on. It's the reporting cadence that makes them look good internally. It's the buying process that lets them feel competent and in control. That's their ritual. When you try to "streamline" their process, when you push them toward a different point of contact, when you change the reporting structure they trust—you're doing exactly what Ron Johnson did. You're selling logic when they're buying a feeling. Stop Leading With Features and Benefits Most salespeople lose deals before they even start because they lead with logical arguments: "Our platform reduces processing time by 40%." "We integrate with 200+ systems." "Our customer support response time is under 2 hours." All logical. All true. All useless if your buyer doesn't feel something first. Your prospect doesn't wake up excited about efficiency gains. They wake up stressed about looking good in front of their VP, avoiding mistakes, and maintaining control of their budget. Research is clear: emotional decisions get made first, then logic comes in to justify them. Your job isn't to build a logical case. Your job is to help your buyer feel like a hero, then give them the logical ammunition to defend that emotional decision internally. How to Apply This Starting Today Identify Their Rituals Watch how your customers actually operate. Do they need three stakeholders in every meeting? Do they always loop in procurement at a specific stage? Do they have a preferred communication cadence? Don't fight it. Work with it. Their process is their psychological anchor for stability. Frame the Win They Can Own Frame your solution so the customer feels in control and gets the credit. Instead of: "Our platform will solve your problem." Try: “This approach could help you demonstrate a 30% cost reduction in Q2—giving your team clear wins to share with leadership.” Make them the hero of their own story. Highlight Emotional Outcomes, Not Just Logical Ones Don't just talk about what your product does. Talk about how it makes them feel. "You'll have complete visibility so you're never caught off guard in executive meetings." "Your team will finally have the data they need to look proactive instead of reactive." "You'll be the person who solved the problem everyone else said was impossible." Guide, Don't Force Lead your prospects toward better outcomes without stripping away their sense of control. Instead of forcing a complete switch to your system, collaborate on how your solution enhances their existing trusted process. Make them feel like a collaborator, not a passenger. The Takeaway Ron Johnson wasn't wrong that consumers should prefer transparent, honest pricing. He wasn't wrong that the coupon game was exhausting and complicated. He was wrong about what people actually buy. They buy feelings. Control. Victory. Status. The story they tell themselves about being smart. Your prospects are no different. They're not buying your SaaS platform, your consulting services, or your enterprise solution. They're buying the feeling of being competent, in control, and successful. The difference between average salespeople and top performers isn't product knowledge or work ethic. It's understanding the sales psychology behind how buyers actually make decisions. When you appeal to emotion first and back it up with logic second, you stop losing deals to “no decision” and start winning consistently. Because at the end of the day, sales isn't about having the best product. It's about making your customer feel like they made the best decision. Ready to master buyer psychology and close more deals? Download the ACED Buyer Style Playbook and discover how to match your sales approach to the four core buyer personalities. Stop selling logic. Start selling the way your customers actually buy.