A Rep Told Me ‘You’re Different.’ I Asked What He Meant.

Drinks with the team last Thursday. One of those rare nights where the laptops stay closed and people actually talk.

I was two beers in when one of my reps – a guy who’s been in sales for maybe five years – said something that stopped me cold.

“You’re different, you know that?”

I laughed it off. But he kept going.

What He Said

“I’ve worked for a lot of sales leaders,” he said. “They all have the same energy. Push, push, push. More calls. More emails. Hit your numbers or else.”

He took a drink.

“You don’t do that. I’ve been trying to figure out what you do instead, and I can’t name it. But it’s different.”

I asked him to try. To describe what he’d noticed.

He thought for a minute.

“You don’t push. Everyone else pushes. You just… don’t. But somehow your deals close anyway. Actually, they close better.”

Why I Couldn’t Explain It

Here’s the thing: I didn’t have an answer for him.

I know something is different about how I work deals now versus how I worked them ten years ago. But I’ve never been able to articulate it. It’s instinct. It’s feel. It’s a thousand micro-decisions that I make without thinking about them.

I told him I’d think about it. That I was actually working on something – trying to figure out the same thing he was asking about.

He looked at me like I was being modest. I wasn’t. I genuinely don’t have the language for it yet.

What I Think He’s Seeing

I’ve been thinking about this conversation for days. Replaying it. Trying to reverse-engineer what he noticed.

Here’s my best guess:

I stopped chasing. At some point – I can’t tell you when – I stopped trying to drag deals across the finish line. When a buyer pulls back, I let them. When they go quiet, I don’t flood their inbox.

I stopped pitching benefits and started asking about consequences. What happens if they don’t solve this? What’s it costing them to wait? I let them do the math.

I stopped creating urgency and started looking for it. If it’s not there, I don’t manufacture it. I move on.

I stopped trying to convince and started trying to qualify. Not “can I sell this person” but “should I spend time here at all.”

Is that what he’s seeing? Maybe. I think so. But I’m still working on how to teach it.

The Gap Between Doing and Teaching

This is the hard part.

I can do something without being able to explain it. Most experienced salespeople can. You develop instincts over decades. You know when to push and when to back off. You feel when a deal is real and when it’s not.

But instinct doesn’t scale. You can’t train instinct. If I want to help my team – if I want to help anyone – I need to turn the instinct into a system.

That’s what I’m trying to do with this writing. Take the thing I can’t name and give it a name. Take the thing I do without thinking and turn it into something I can teach.

I’m not there yet. But conversations like the one last Thursday tell me I’m onto something.

Something different.