i used to think closing was the hardest part of sales. then i had a conversation that made me realise i had the whole thing backwards

used to obsess over the close.

every book i read, every training i sat through, every manager i had — all of it pointed to the same thing. the close is where it happens. get better at closing and everything else follows.

so i got better at closing. learned the techniques, practiced the transitions, got comfortable asking for the business directly.

and my numbers were fine. not great. fine.

then i got paired with the top rep in our company for a joint call. she had been number one for three years running. i expected to watch her close brilliantly.

she barely closed at all.

what she did instead was spend the first thirty minutes of the call asking questions i had never thought to ask. not discovery questions from a framework. genuinely curious questions about things that had nothing to do with the sale. how the person got into their role, what the team dynamic was like, what had changed in the business recently that was making this problem feel urgent right now.

by the time we got to the product the prospect was already leaning in. not because she pitched brilliantly. because they felt genuinely understood by someone who had taken thirty minutes to actually care about their situation.

on the drive back i asked her what her closing rate was.

she said she honestly did not track it because by the time she got to the close it almost never felt like the hard part.

the close was easy because everything before it was real.

i went back and looked at every deal i had lost that year. almost none of them fell apart at the close. they fell apart somewhere in the middle where the prospect quietly stopped feeling like i was actually on their side.

what is the thing you stopped obsessing over in sales that actually got better the moment you stopped trying to force it?