Crafting the Sale: Drive Revenue, Impress Buyers, and Transform Your Career

By Michael Tuso

Join Michael Tuso as he guides sellers out of the antiquated world of “one size fits all” pitching and into a world that empowers buyers and sellers alike through problem-solving and system building. 

If you find the traditional methods of hard selling and forceful tactics to be outdated and exhausting, then Crafting the Sale is the refreshing people-focused approach you need. Learn how to solve buyer problems, increase your sales numbers, and create impeccable sales and buying experiences. Buyers don’t have to work with you; they choose to work with you—and Crafting the Sale shows you exactly how to get those buyers to engage, act, and convert. 

In this modern approach to selling, Tuso tosses aside canned sales pitches and instead shows how true success in sales stems from understanding others and problem-solving. Throughout, Tuso takes on old-school methodologies and shows how to equip sales teams with newer, more refined approaches to their craft, demonstrating how to: 

• create space for the buyer, 
• unlock the power of emotional connection, 
• ask thoughtful questions that build trust, 
• put the buyers’ needs first instead of the product, 
• save floundering customer relationships, 
• craft messages that buyers actually want to read, 
• prevent buyers from ghosting you, 
• build the right habits to help you sell more sustainably, 
• remain top of mind even when the buyer is not in the market, 
• deploy the most up-to-date sales tactics to increase revenue, 
• and much more. 

Crafting the Sale is the ultimate tool for anyone new to sales or looking to level-up their skills, improve their outcomes, and create lasting connections with customers. Salespeople can be successful by adapting to the changing dynamic between buyer and seller and providing experiences that benefit both sides. All it takes is genuine conversation, a problem-solving attitude, and a commitment to learning. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Girl Friday Books
• Release date: Sep 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781954854079

Michael Tuso

Michael Tuso has hired, coached, and trained hundreds of salespeople and generated millions in revenue for businesses from startups to Fortune 500 companies. He has served in virtually every sales role there is, from entry-level all the way up to cofounder and CEO of his own startup, Callypso. Tuso has been named a two-time Top Sales Leader to Follow by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals, the Best Sales Development Leader by Tenbound, a Top LinkedIn Sales Star by Sales Success Media, and a Top Sales Leader to Follow by Crunchbase. He is deeply passionate about spreading meaningful change to help businesses be more successful and help buyers get their problems solved. Tuso currently resides in Ashland, Oregon, with his partner. 

Book preview

Introduction

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The Hard Seller

Why Old-School Sales Techniques Don’t Work Anymore

I really did not want to lie down on this bed.

Please don’t make me, I thought to myself. Oh god, here she goes. She’s going to make me do it.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on an $8,000 mattress I had no intention of buying.

The salesperson had practically been salivating when she greeted my partner and me at the door. I read the expression on her face, and the slight upward curl at the corners of her lips told me everything I needed to know. We fit the affluent millennial profile she had been waiting for all day.

What can I help you find?

We need a new bed, I said tentatively.

You’ve come to the right place, she said without missing a beat. Do you know what Restoration Hardware is as a style?

I took a big yet unassuming sigh. Yes.

Oh gosh, I just knew you two would.

Because we’re a gay couple? I whispered to my partner. I couldn’t help myself with the inference.

Her pupils dilated some more as I felt her trying to jump into my wallet headfirst.

I think I have the perfect one. Right this way.

In an unfortunate series of events that redirected us from what we came into the store for, suddenly I found myself lying on the most expensive bed in the showroom. I can see her logic now. If you can just get the customer to visualize what it will be like to have this bed⁠—this majestic piece of gold disguised as memory foam⁠—then they will have to buy it.

This woman is going to get me if I don’t stop her, I thought. I work in sales; why was I letting her do this?

When my eyes opened back up, she was hovering over us like a cat toying with its meal.

How do you like it? As if anything but an affirmative would work.

Begrudgingly, I matched her enthusiasm. Feels great.

She smiled approvingly, clearly pleased with how things were going. Then something caught her eye across the showroom. Hold on one second⁠—I have another customer that had a question. Don’t you two go anywhere. I’ll be right back.

As soon as she was out of sight, we ran for the doors and never looked back.

Buying Shouldn’t Be Painful

What happens in your brain when someone tries to sell you something? Do you get excited? Do you feel annoyed? Do you put up a wall? Do you walk away? Do you feel nervous? Happy? Uncomfortable? Do conversations around money make you feel awkward? If so, why?

Now flip the scenario. What if you are the one selling? How do you feel? Is the inclination to impress your viewpoint on others? Do you have a knee-jerk impulse to want to tell, explain, and pitch? What is that knee-jerk experience we see so often in ourselves and in other people?

Often, the impulse is exactly this: To pitch. To tell. To persuade. But deep down inside, a part of you feels that this approach is not quite right.

If you’re like me, maybe you initially thought selling was describing. Before I got into sales, I thought the profession was solely about description: Our service is better than our competitors’. You won’t find anyone who can beat our price. This steak is dry aged for sixty days. But describing without knowing the audience feels a little bit like winging it. When you stop to think about it, does that ever work? Maybe, but shouldn’t we know a little bit about them so we can have some inclination of how our pitch will land?

It’s not just the pitch anymore, though. It’s the emails that don’t really help us solve problems or that simply promote product features instead. It’s the calls that feel invasive instead of helping us solve problems. Our craft has been reduced to a single-minded fixation on the sale at all costs. In the meantime, we have lost our sense of the finer details. We have lost what it means to sell well. We fixate on the end itself without a clear blueprint of the how part of getting there. We could all benefit from slowing things down to help both ourselves and our prospects see a clearer picture.

Sellers today often come into the conversation with buyers at a much later point than they did previously. We also, on average, have less face time with buyers than ever before. The consulting firm Gartner projects that by 2025, nearly 80 percent of all client interactions will be conducted digitally. And today’s buyers are also better informed. Before the internet, the seller often had the most up-to-date information on pricing, features, and the general lay of the land in specific markets. Today, buyers can go on Kelley Blue Book and find out what a car is worth. They can compare software products on G2. They can jump into a Slack group and get information directly from their most trusted source of information⁠—other buyers. Since buyers are better informed, they now expect a certain experience, on a cultural and emotional level.

Compounding this issue, it is also easier than ever to build a bespoke product. Whether your product is software, a book like this one, or something physical, it has never in human history been easier to create and customize. This dynamic gives buyers options, and options are power. More options can be more confusing too. Time spent qualifying and searching for a tool, then staking your reputation on the success of said tool, is taxing.

This is where the sales experience can make all the difference in a buyer’s decision. Today’s sellers don’t need to list every reason why their product is better. And they definitely should not engage in high-pressure sales. Instead, sellers should help buyers get to yes on their own by focusing on the finer details of selling and providing an exceptional sales experience.

When you think of selling this way, it completely flips the dynamic. To sell more means to pitch, smooth talk, lecture, persuade, influence. Do you want these things done to you? No. No one wants their own individual autonomy of choice thwarted by anyone. Therefore, many people are triggered as soon as they engage with salespeople. Buyers know what you’re doing. As soon as they hear awkward, sales-y one-liners, the veil is broken. You’ve immediately been detected and labeled: Salesperson. Cares about their commission. And then they move on to the next person who will help them.

This doesn’t mean we never ask for their business. Quite the opposite. We ask instead of pressure.

To be fair, we always have harsh criticisms for salespeople when we’re the buyers, or even the observers. And then we deliver these same awkward experiences when we are the ones selling. But focusing on being crafters of the sale, having a real human conversation without the awkwardness, takes practice and consciousness. We need to be direct, conversational, light, and fun. This lightness attracts buyers because it allows for us to deliver new information to them without taking away their need to solve problems on their own.

We need to hit the update button on how we sell. We must do so if we want to get better at our craft, make more money, and escape the hamster wheel of poor buying experiences.

What about picking up on social cues⁠—like when someone says something, we respond to them with the way they want to be treated? Tolerance for less-than-stellar experiences is diminishing rapidly. I fundamentally believe this is a good thing for the industry. Out with leading with the idea of persuading people for personal gain and in with solving real, acutely painful problems for our buyers.

We, the sellers, have a hugely important role in this paradigm shift. In today’s world, we must take personal accountability for our own learning in sales and transform the way we are selling. We need to hit the update button on how we sell. We must do so if we want to get better at our craft, make more money, and escape the hamster wheel of poor buying experiences. Gone are the days of high-pressure selling. Gone are the days of business being about me, me, me. Sales is getting harder, yes, but buying is getting even harder. Recognizing and aligning to that can only help us.

The solutions to these problems are simple but not easy:

First, as a seller, you must learn to resist the knee-jerk reaction to begin with yourself (or your product) and instead start with the buyer.

Second, you must provide a different and better sales experience than your competitors.

Third, you must be radically easy to understand and work with.

Fourth and last, you must understand your buyer’s view of the world.

Why I Wrote This Book

I wrote this book because I saw over the course of my career that even the smallest improvements in how we sell can lead to monumental results. I would notice someone with raw talent that I just knew could do even better, and I saw the effects that even a modest amount of coaching would have not just on their short-term performance but also on their entire career.

I would see low performers move income brackets and figure out how to make sales a sustainable career. I would see top performers bring home paychecks that allowed them to travel the world, build families, and reach new heights that would have been out of reach for them in other careers. I would see people literally lift themselves out of poverty through the commitment of learning how to get better at sales.

This book was simply my chance to share with a broader audience my learnings from coaching on the front lines of sales teams. I don’t expect you to agree with everything I say. I consider this book more of a guide to help you think about sales and a way to elevate your own craft. But at the end of the day, this book is about what has worked and not worked for me. Because sales is such a soft skill, with elements of art and science tossed together, it is impossible for anyone to claim total authority over a vast discipline that involves complex human psychology, money, corporate politics, prospecting, closing, forecasting, and so much more. We all have strengths and weaknesses, we are all students of the craft, and we all must learn from each other.

But I also wrote this book for another reason. I wrote this book because I rarely have good experiences when I am buying, and I saw that with just a little bit of training, salespeople can get vastly better at understanding what makes buyers tick. When they do this, they can significantly increase their commissions, deliver results for their companies, and be proud of their work. I have observed on the front lines a very different reality than what I have heard from many sales leaders. It wasn’t that people lacked raw talent alone. It’s that they lacked know-how. So, what if we showed them how? I’ve found when provided this know-how coupled with support, most sellers can radically improve their results.

I first noticed this dynamic while working for a Fortune 500 company. The leadership set sales targets and quotas, then simply crossed their fingers and hoped that the salespeople would figure it out for themselves. The sellers then experienced high levels of stress and burnout, which led to constant turnover. The motto became Hire faster, fire faster. The trauma of working in this environment made me understand the value of training and mentoring. I also wanted to know why people were or were not successful in sales.

I grew up where money was not readily available. I was raised by a single mom. My first job ever was as a karate instructor; that’s where I really honed my love for coaching people. Watching them improve was what made me tick. It still is what makes me tick. I was good at the art myself, but I came alive when I was helping others. Not just in the generic I want to help people way, but in the meaningful way where you see someone get significantly better because of working with you.

These early experiences shaped my beliefs around coaching and training. I learned that if you support people, truly support them, your company will do well too. I also learned that if you give a little more effort during onboarding, your people can ramp up faster. By training people and not just letting them learn on the fly, you can build a consistent and lasting team culture that keeps everything moving forward. It may seem like a simple idea, but if you hire the right people, you must then give them a place where they can grow and develop. You’d be surprised how uncommon this is in practice.

By training people and not just letting them learn on the fly, you can build a consistent and lasting team culture that keeps everything moving forward.

I’m not one of those people that believes a company is a family (run for the hills if you hear a company referring to its people as family). But good salespeople form a team, or