Three Forces Killing Your Sales (That Have Nothing to Do With Your Product)
I’m grateful to work with some of the most admired companies in the world. But in the past 18 months, I’ve noticed three powerful forces causing their sales teams to lose more deals than they should.
Unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction most companies have to sales funnel turbulence is doubling down on product training. They say things like: “If our reps were able to better understand our product and more clearly communicate our value proposition, we’d be able to sell more!”
In the past, I’ve written extensively about why that approach doesn’t work and how sellers need to lead their narrative with problems, not products, and apply healthy doses of empathy if they want buyers to engage. Because the truth is, the competitive landscape that’s emerged in recent months can’t be conquered with better products, features, or pricing.
The selling environment has changed in ways most companies haven’t caught onto yet.
The Changing Sales Landscape
The number of solutions in every category of the market is exploding. For example, in the marketing technology space alone, the number of products has increased by a jaw-dropping 100X, from 150 to 15,384 solutions, since 2011. At the same time, human attention spans have shrunk by almost 70% over the past 20 years, fuelled by an endless supply of distractions and technology.
Buyers are drowning in pitches, demos, and pseudo-personalized outreach that all start to blur together. At the same time, the pendulum is swinging back from the all virtual sales motion we saw in the pandemic, to one where a face-to-face presence is seen as a competitive differentiator — especially for high-stakes meetings, enterprise customers and relationships where trust, subtle cues and presence matter.
So if you want to rise above the noise and stand out in a sea of sameness, these are three forces you can’t ignore.
#1: AI Is Making Us More Efficient at Being Less Effective
There’s no shortage of AI-powered sales tools out there (you might even sell one). And to be fair, AI has made certain things easier. You can draft more emails, research prospects faster, and scale your efforts in ways that weren’t possible before. AI isn’t bad. But it has made it too easy to do more without thinking deeper.
That means your prospects are getting buried under an avalanche of AI-generated outreach. And while the technology has gotten pretty good, with each note “personalized” with a data point or two, there’s still something that feels… off.
AI is polished enough to elude the spam filter, but not quite human enough to actually connect. And volume without resonance is just noise.
AI still struggles with nuance. It doesn’t pick up on the subtle cues that tell you what really matters to this particular person. And when we use it as a shortcut to do more, faster, we’re not delivering better experiences—we’re just being spammy at scale.
So the question is, are you using AI to think deeper, or just to do more?
How to Use AI More Strategically
The best reps use AI as a research assistant, not a replacement for human insight. This is especially true for reps who are new to their industry or company and trying to come up to speed quickly. They’re using it to craft smarter questions and uncover hidden sources of urgency, not just send more emails. As I often say, if you want to sell someone a Band-Aid, sometimes you have to “cut” them first. Meaning, you need to expose a problem that may not be fully on their radar.
For example, consider one of the scripts I share in my free AI prompts for salespeople:
“Act as a seller who sells [insert product/service] to buyers like a [insert role/industry]. Based on my customer’s current priorities, goals, and constraints, what might give them a sense of urgency to invest in my solution in the next quarter that wouldn’t be on my or their radar at the moment?’
To test it out, I used:
Buyer = “VP of Sales at a mid-market SaaS company”
Seller = “Sales training program designed to boost discovery and objection handling skills”
Here’s a sample of what came back:
Hidden pipeline leakage: Most sellers assume VPs only care about overall win rates or quota attainment. What they might not see is that stalled deals in discovery represent a quiet but material revenue loss. If you frame your program as a way to “unlock stuck deals” or “convert stalled pipeline faster,” the VP realizes there’s a short-term dollar impact they hadn’t fully quantified.
If you want to stand out, learn to use AI understand the mind of your buyer and go narrow and deep, not wide and shallow.
#2: The Experience IS Your Product
I recently delivered a keynote at a sales kickoff for a fast-growing software company. But before I took the stage I sat in the audience and listened to a panel of three of their customers talk about why they chose the vendor.
The discussion was moderated by a senior customer success leader who started the conversation by addressing the customers with a leading question, “Would it be safe to say that one of the biggest reasons you chose us was because we save you money and help you do more with less?” What happened next left the audience of sellers shocked (and me, not surprised).
One of the customers immediately raised an eyebrow and chimed in. “The truth is, we evaluated a bunch of solutions and there were a bunch of similar options out there. Do you want to really know why we chose you? Three reasons. First, you listened to us! Every other vendor kept hitting us with pitches. You took the time to ask great questions and understand our problems. Second, the stories you shared opened our eyes to new ways of running our business we hadn’t even considered. And third, you’re a really great partner! Whenever we need you, you’re always super responsive.”
Nowhere in the customer’s glowing praise was there any mention of the vendor’s solution. And it was a great reminder:
In a world filled with infinite solution choices and distractions, and buyers who make emotional purchasing decisions on how it feels to work with you, the customer experience IS your product.
Gartner reports that companies that deliver a great buying experience grow twice as fast as those that deliver average experiences. And Forrester reports that Millennials and Gen Zers, now 71% of B2B purchasers, aren’t as swayed by financial conceptions of value as older buyers and find friction in the buying experience unacceptable.
How to Deliver Killer Customer Experiences
If you want to differentiate yourself from your competition and break out of the commodity zone, you need to focus on creating a high-value and frictionless experience during the sales cycle that transcends your solution.
For example, simple things like doing your homework before every call can have a big impact. Nothing is more frustrating to a buyer than a salesperson who hasn’t spent time coming up to speed on their business, your interactions with their company so far (especially if another rep was previously responsible for their account), or leads with a generic, drive-by pitch.
Sharing hidden industry trends, expanding their professional network through helpful introductions, being prescriptive when it comes to leading them through the buying process, and setting good next steps, are all powerful ways of adding value to the customer experience.
The simple experience litmus test: Will my customer feel our interaction was valuable, even if they never end up buying anything from me?
That means your enablement programs need to go beyond product training. Your reps need to understand how to create value at every touchpoint—not just in the demo, but in discovery, follow-up, and how they handle objections and uncertainty.
Because a world-class buying experience builds more trust than any product feature pitch ever could.
#3: The Executive Presentation Skills Gap
In a recent analysis, 87% of sales managers said that face-to-face meetings remain critical to developing strong business relationships. According to the Harvard Business Review, the ability to deliver a compelling executive presentation has become a make-or-break skill, now in demand more than ever—but most leaders are finding their teams don’t have it.
An entire generation of sellers grew up on Zoom in the pandemic era. They’re comfortable with screen shares and virtual demos, but struggle to manifest confidence and conviction when presenting to a C-suite buying committee. Even experienced sellers are realizing their executive presentation muscles have atrophied since the pandemic. But this skill gap is actually a two-pronged problem: the what and the how of delivering compelling presentations.
The what is the content itself. Most salespeople have never learned how to craft and powerful narrative, which explains why most pitches I see are built the wrong way. They lead with products, solutions, and overly complex ecosystem or architecture slides. Then they move on to themselves as a vendor; how long they’ve been in business, their customers, and some nice shots of their team members. The problem is, customer executives don’t care about those things. At least not first. Their world is consumed by the problems they’re facing, confusion around why those problems are so hard to solve, and their desire for growth.
Your customers don’t need to they a commercial. They need clarity.
The how is all about your delivery. Your pacing, your tone, and the authentic conviction you manifest as you tell your story. But overreliance on slides, lack of practice and preparation, and a rigid flow that doesn’t allow for audience engagement and improvisation all add up to a less-than-compelling presentation experience.
It’s Time to Rethink Your Narrative
In a commoditized market where authentic human connection is scarce, the ability to walk into a room and tell a story that lands is your secret weapon. But the winning presentations today aren’t product demonstrations. They’re problem narratives. They show deep expertise in the customer’s challenges. They build conviction, not through feature lists, but through insight and empathy. They make the executives think, “Finally, someone who gets it.”
To fill this critical gap, start by rethinking how you structure your presentations. Train your team to lead with the customer’s problems, not your solution. Focus on getting through the first 75 percent of your narrative without even talking about your solution. Build a narrative arc that takes executives on a journey—from their current state, the source of their problems, the hidden forces that will produce winners and losers in the market, and then to the land of the possible.
Focus on giving your reps practice with stand-and-deliver style certification. The craft of storytelling doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s absolutely learnable—and the teams that invest here are the ones that win.
The Common Thread
These three trends share something important: in a world where products are increasingly similar and attention is increasingly scarce, the human elements of selling—authenticity, experience, and executive presence—have become your only real differentiators.
The question is: are you training your team to win in today’s game or yesterday’s?
If you’re still focused primarily on product knowledge and competitive positioning, you’re preparing them for a battle that’s already over. The new battlefield is about human connection, buyer experience, and the ability to communicate value in ways that resonate with the people who matter most.
The good news? These are all learnable skills. Your team can get better at using AI thoughtfully, creating exceptional buyer experiences, and delivering presentations that win rooms. But it starts with recognizing that the game has changed—and being willing to invest in the capabilities that actually move the needle today.
