Why Everything You Know About Sales Is Wrong
This post is Issue #2 of the TW Sales Newsletter, sent May 6, 2026.
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Last week I was on Truth, Lies and Work on the HubSpot Podcast Network. They called the episode, “Why Everything You Know About Sales Is Wrong“.
Bold title. It’s not my intention to be a contrarian, but as I do more podcasts and speaking events I’m learning I have a lot of contrarian takes! Here’s a breakdown of a few.
Every prospect comes into a sales call expecting the salesperson to lie to them.
Expecting they’ll meet the pushy, self-interested stereotypical salesperson they’ve had so many negative experiences with before.
As a salesperson, you always start in a trust deficit. It’s so important to remember that.
Because if you do anything that reinforces that distrust, the prospect thinks, “Ahh, I knew it. I knew I was right not to trust you.” And your deal collapses.
Sales advice I never hear: tell the truth. Or respect the prospect’s “no.”
Most sales advice, implicitly or explicitly, deepens the trust deficit. The sort of sales advice that teaches tricks for objection handling or creating urgency with things like faux scarcity tactics.
I do the opposite. And my teams close deals the faux scarcity sellers never could.
Here are three things I coach my teams to do differently. None of them are tricks. They’re actually really simple. They all come back to one idea: detachment. Don’t be attached to the deal in front of you.
1. Tell the truth about features.
When a prospect asks if you have a feature you don’t have, just say no.
Don’t dance, don’t reframe, don’t try to say a different feature is a great work around when it isn’t. Be honest. Just say no.
This is hard. Inside your head, you’re thinking: “If I say no, I’m going to lose the deal.” Salespeople aren’t inherently dishonest. But their attachment to deals is what tends to lead to dishonesty. Because saying no in these moments feels like saying no to the deal.
The thing sellers think will sink the deal, the missing feature, usually isn’t what sinks it. Maybe the prospect is disappointed in the moment. But more often than not, the feature wasn’t a dealbreaker anyways.
And they’ll leave that conversation trusting you. Whereas if you’d stretched the truth, you’d have lost the trust. And that’s what actually sinks the deal.
2. Respect the no.
When a prospect pushes back, most sellers push back harder. I do the opposite. I respect the no.
When you stop pushing, something interesting happens. The prospect’s resistance disappears.
And without that resistance, their objections have nothing to push back on and they basically fall over. Allowing the prospect to reconsider on their own.
One of my Account Managers got an email from a customer telling us they weren’t renewing. Big Fortune 100 enterprise client. Total surprise. Typical sales advice would have said to try to push, persuade, and beg them to reconsider.
A lot of salespeople don’t realize that this sort of response implicitly tells their customers “your decision is wrong.”
Instead, I sent a short reply asking what was driving the decision. They ended up renewing at a higher contract value than the original (full breakdown here).
Resistance feeds resistance. The absence of resistance feels like respect. It invites reconsideration. And that’s what turns “no” into “yes”.
3. Talk less. A lot less.
Most salespeople talk about 70% of the time on a sales call. The prospect talks 30%.
I coach my teams to invert that. I don’t do a lot of deals these days, but on my calls, my talk ratio usually averages 25%. The prospect is doing the rest.
This isn’t a technique. It’s what happens naturally when you’re not attached to the deal. You stop filling silence with pitches. You stop interrupting objections with rebuttals. You stop performing.
The prospect feels it. They open up. They tell you what’s actually going on in their world. They go beyond the guarded, polished version they’d typically share. Their competing priorities. Their real concerns about rolling out your product. And the internal battles they’re facing to get budget and buy-in.
You can’t sell to people you don’t understand. And you can’t understand them while you’re talking.
Listen to the Truth, Lies and Work podcast here: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Sales tactics, playbooks, and revenue strategy. From a 3× acquisition CRO.
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