Disagree? 🤔 Maybe I’m wrong! And all power to you!
Relatable and painful to hear?… read on…
You’re Leaving Money on the Table… Here’s Why
Brutal truth bomb….
Your sales team isn’t customer-focused. You might think they are. They know the product. They know the pitch. They know the features, the benefits, the latest case studies. And do they know the customer? Really know them? Or are they just waiting for the next inbound order to drop?
If your team is:
❌ Relying on your brand name to bring in business instead of proactively seeking opportunities…
❌ Taking orders instead of driving decisions…
❌ Guessing at customer needs instead of getting deep into their world…
…then they’re not selling. They’re serving. And not in a good way.
Big Brands Create Lazy Sellers
The bigger the brand, the easier it is to get complacent. Customers come to you, so your team stops going to them. They become reactive order-takers, not proactive sales professionals. They wait for customers to ask for something instead of guiding them towards what they actually need. And that’s a serious problem. Because while they’re busy processing another repeat order, a hungrier, more switched-on competitor is having the conversations that actually drive long-term growth.
Your Team Knows the Product…. Do They Know the CUSTOMER?
Most salespeople can rattle off every spec, feature, and benefit of your product. That’s competence. The challenge is whether they can answer these?
✅ What is the highest priority for the customer, in their world, right now?
✅ What pressures are coming down from their board?
✅ What does success really look like for them (beyond “saving money” or “increasing efficiency”)?
✅ What industry shifts are they worried about?
If they can’t answer questions like this without guessing, they don’t know the customer. And if they don’t know the customer, they can’t sell to them properly.
Salespeople Need to Become Experts in the Customer’s World
Here’s the shift: Stop being an expert in your product. Start being an expert in your customer.
That means:
✔ Immersing yourself in their industry. What trends, challenges, and market forces are shaping their decisions?
✔ Speaking their language. Ditch YOUR jargon. Talk like someone who actually understands their world.
✔ Guiding, not just responding. Don’t wait for them to ask. Help them see what’s possible before they realise they need it.
Training Alone Doesn’t Fix This
It pains me to say that, as training takes such a pivotal role in how we work with clients. And yet, we all know deep down that training that leads to nothing, comes of nothing. Skills without a shift in mind-set will not cut it. Enabling a team who are not empowered by the business, is a waste of money.
You can send your team on all the training courses in the world. It won’t matter if they’re still thinking like product pushers instead of trusted advisors.
What actually works? A mindset shift. A new way of selling. One that’s built on deep customer knowledge, proactive thinking, and genuine curiosity.
SHAMELESS PLUG – Transformational training and development is what we do at Front&Centre®. We don’t do ‘off-the-shelf’. We rebuild how your team thinks, speaks, and sells, so they show up as true experts, not order-takers.
👉 If you’re ready to turn your sales team into customer growth champions, let’s talk. Because right now? They’re not.
