“Everything in business is rapidly getting commoditized. Especially in sales.”
John Barrows said that when he had me on as a guest on his Make It Happen Mondays podcast.
After 25+ years inside Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and Okta, John now works with CROs (Chief Revenue Officers) and VPs of Sales on one brutal point: rebuild your team or replace it. His podcast (250+ episodes and 1.2M+ downloads) and his work have been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and INC.
John’s verdict on this point: Sales has nothing to do with what you sell. It has everything to do with how you sell.
Commoditized sales is a real problem. Same product. Same features. Same pricing. Same demo. Every team running the same playbook, asking the same questions, getting the same “we’ll circle back.”
Why does one salesperson get an entirely different outcome selling the same item and the same set of features compared to another salesperson who blows the deal?
Because one person asks a question, the other person never thought to ask. That’s how we stand out in sales. Not with a better pitch. Not with more choices. With a better question.
Unlocking Your Sales Genius: Watch The Full Interview
Before we go further, here’s the full conversation with John Barrows on Make It Happen Mondays. We cover brand, risk, AI, why most design is illiterate, and what happens when you stop showing your portfolio and start solving the real problem. (Some of you prefer to hit play rather than read more. I get it. Go ahead. For the rest of us, let’s dig into the single question that changes everything.)
Why Most Pitches Die Before They Start
Here’s how most sales conversations go.
You ask questions for 30 minutes. Good questions. Curious questions. The prospect talks. You listen. Two ears, one mouth. All the right ratios.
Then you pivot. You say, “Thank you very much for that. Now let me tell you about who we are, what we do, and why we’re better.”
And at the end, you hear a word. One word: “Digest.”
“Hey, you know what? I’m going to need a little time to digest what you just told me. Why don’t we circle back in a couple of weeks?”
John calls this the kiss of death. He’s right. When someone needs to “digest,” you failed. You dumped information on them. You didn’t help them see something new. You answered their question without ever asking the right one.
The prospect didn’t come to a new conclusion.
They came to the same conclusion they had before you walked in. Which was “I’ll think about it.”
The Sales Skill I Never Learned in Design School
I spent years showing my portfolio.
That’s what design school trains us for. Make the portfolio beautiful. Build a book that drops jaws. When you get in the room, let the work speak for itself.
So my meetings were 85% portfolio. Maybe 15% talking to the actual human being across the table. And those meetings didn’t close.
Over time, I got curious. I started asking more questions. I wanted to understand the problem. Their business frustration. The thing that kept them up at night.
My ratio flipped: 95% discussion. 5% showing work.
Those meetings closed deals. Built rapport. Shifted me from vendor to collaborator.
Here’s what nobody tells you in school. The person sitting across from you is a hell of a lot more important than your portfolio.
They don’t care about your brilliance. They don’t care about your awards. They only care about their problem.
And if you don’t understand their problem, and have the skill to reframe it back to them in a way they’ve never heard anyone articulate before, nothing else matters.
The 4-Word Question That Drives Sales Differentiation
Every so often in a meeting, I get what I call the “hands over the chest” moment. I love that moment.
The prospect leans back. Crosses their arms. And asks me something deep.
Something meaningful. Something they clearly pulled from a Simon Sinek video, a Seth Godin book, or a podcast they heard on the way to work.
I love this moment.
I’m smiling ear to ear. I let them finish. I don’t cut them off.
And in my head, I am thinking four words: “What should you ask?”
In other words, what should that prospect sitting before me really be asking me?
Then I say, “I understand why you’re asking that question. But the question you should really be asking is…”
Boom.
The room changes. The frame shifts. The prospect is no longer evaluating me against a checklist they brought into the room. They’re now thinking about something they hadn’t considered.
These are the sales questions that close deals. Not because they’re clever. Because they reframe the entire conversation before a single feature gets mentioned.
That is when the sale begins.
People Don’t Come To New Conclusions With Old Information
This is the law every closer has mastered.
Prospects do not come to new conclusions with old information. Ever.
Buyers do not come to new conclusions with the same tired categories. Your client does not come to a new decision using the same metrics they’ve been using for the last five years.
Each of us is in the business of disruption.
We are not in the business of sounding like our competitors. We are not in the business of stepping into the same sandbox and playing with the same toys. Anyone can say they’re the best, the fastest, the simplest. Every competitor in your category is already saying that.
When you walk in and add your voice to that chorus, you’re invisible.
If you want to stop sounding like your competitors in sales, it starts here. With the discipline to refuse the easy answer and reach for the better question instead.
It’s why I tell clients, different is better than better. That one fact is the secret that’s driven well over $9 billion in revenue for clients of every shape, size, industry, and location.
- Better gets compared.
- Better gets scrutinized.
- Better gets a spreadsheet plus a committee meeting concluding a “let’s circle back.”
Different is what gets noticed. Different makes the prospect stop and say, “Wait. Nobody else said that. Tell me more.”
The Netflix Principle
Netflix started with DVDs by mail.
Red envelopes. No late fees. That was their thing. And it worked.
But they weren’t married to it.
When streaming became possible, they didn’t dig their heels in. They didn’t say “No, we’re a DVD company.” They didn’t build a moat around red envelopes. They pivoted. Because they were married to the customer’s problem, not their solution.
Blockbuster had the opposite instinct. They were married to the store. The stale Twizzlers. The empty boxes. The late fees. The business model was the product.
One of those companies is worth $291 billion today. The other is a history lesson. And a punchline.
The same principle applies to every sales conversation you’ll ever have. If you’re married to your pitch, your demo, your features, your “we’ve been in business since” story, you’ve already lost.
You’re not solving their problem. You’re selling your solution. Those are not the same thing.
How To Stand Out In Sales: Deploy This Week
1. Flip your ratio
Stop leading with what you do. Start leading with what you need to understand.
My rule: 95% questions and discussion. 5% showing work.
→ Before your next meeting, write down 10 questions you’ve never asked a prospect before.
→ Make at least three of them about what frustrates them about their current situation, not what they need.
→ If you catch yourself pitching before the 30-minute mark, stop. You’re not ready.
Most people spend the first 10 minutes building rapport and the next 20 minutes waiting to pitch. That’s not curiosity. That’s a countdown.
2. Hunt for the wrong question
Every prospect walks in with a question they think is the right one.
It rarely is. It’s a question they heard someone else ask. It’s something they read. It’s the safe question. The one that makes them sound smart without exposing what they actually don’t know.
Your job: listen for it. When you hear it, don’t answer it. Reframe it.
→ “I understand why you’re asking about [X]. But based on what you’ve told me, the real question you should be asking is [Y].”
Then simply shut up and watch the lights turn on.
That moment of reframe is where trust is built. You just showed them a door they didn’t know existed.
3. Let silence do its job
When you drop the 4-word question, shut up.
Most people can’t handle silence. They fill it. They soften the question. They add a joke. They backpedal before the prospect has even processed what was asked.
Silence is a tool. Use it. The prospect needs time to realize their old question doesn’t work. Let them sit in that discomfort for a beat. The first person to speak after the reframe loses the frame.
4. Marry the problem, not the solution
Netflix didn’t fall in love with red envelopes.
They fell in love with “people want to watch what they want, when they want, without getting punished for having a life.” The DVD was a vehicle. The problem was the customer’s addiction to being entertained.
→ In your next call, don’t lead with what you do. Lead with the problem you help them manage in language that sounds nothing like your competitor.
→ If your prospect could describe your company the same way they’d describe your top competitor, you haven’t differentiated.
→ If your own team can’t articulate the problem you solve in one sentence without mentioning your product, fix that first.
5. Measure by new conclusions, not nods
Nods are cheap. “That’s interesting” is free, but it’s the “We’ll circle back” that costs you everything.
The only metric that matters: Did the prospect say something they’ve never said before?
If they didn’t, you didn’t earn the sale. You showed up. You asked some questions. You pitched. You were polite and professional and completely forgettable.
New conclusions are the only currency. If the prospect walks out thinking the same thing they walked in thinking, you added zero value. You were a placeholder. Another vendor in a long line of vendors who all sound the same.
Winning has only one metric: They left the conversation thinking differently than when they arrived.
Every sale that ever closed started with a moment where the buyer thought, “I hadn’t considered that.” That is where branding merges with selling.
That’s the 4-word question at work.
Join John and me when we meet face to face for the first time at Totality 2026 and blow the roof off sales and bust myths that hold businesses back. Here is a sneak peek at my presentation opening slide:
