Most deals are lost before the phone rings. The seller has already decided the price is too high, the buyer probably can't afford it, and a discount is the safest way through the conversation.
Codie Sanchez, who runs Contrarian Thinking and a portfolio of small businesses she says does nine figures in annual revenue, has a name for this: selling from your wallet. It's the first of four mistakes she sees in reps who can't close, and she treats it as the one that sinks everything else. Fix your script, your pitch deck and your follow-up, and you'll still lose if you privately believe the number is too big.
Her broader claim is that sales is a learnable skill. Most people who struggle with it are getting one of four things wrong: the mindset, the message, the proof, or the person they're selling to.
Your own budget is the first objection the buyer hears
Sanchez recently told her sales team exactly why their lowest performers were underperforming. They were measuring the price against their own bank accounts.
"If you talk yourself out of the deal in your own head first, nobody else is going to pay it."
A $10,000 service sounds expensive to someone who wouldn't spend $10,000. It's cheap to someone whose problem is costing them $100,000. The rep who fixates on the first number has stopped selling a solution and started selling a price, and buyers can smell that.
The financial stakes here are bigger than most sellers assume. Sanchez cites McKinsey research on company income statements showing that raising prices by 1% increases profit by about 8%, a bigger swing than cutting costs 1% or growing volume 1%. If that holds for your business, underpricing is the opposite of playing it safe. It gives up the cheapest growth lever you have because saying the number out loud feels uncomfortable.
This matters now for anyone selling services in a market where buyers compare quotes in seconds. Discounting is the default reflex, and a reflex that feels like prudence can quietly cap a company's margins for years.
Neediness leaks into every sentence
Mindset shows up in language, which is why Sanchez refuses to start with phrasing. She lists the tells:
- "Just checking in" signals you have nothing of value to add.
- "Let me know if you're interested" hands the buyer the work of leading.
- "We can discount it" admits you never believed the price.
- "I just want to be considered" is, in her words, dodgeball in middle school.
The confident versions shift the weight. "Does option A or B make more sense for you?" "Based on what you've described, here's exactly why I'm the right person." When price comes up, she'd rather ask about return on investment, or joke that the price could always go up.
She points to research from the sales-intelligence company Gong finding that top performers use "you," "your" and "your team" 29% more often than average reps. Average reps are thinking about their commission. Top reps are thinking about the buyer's problem.
Let questions do the arguing
When a buyer says "too expensive," Sanchez doesn't defend and doesn't discount. She asks what the problem is costing them right now, then keeps going.
Her example: a homeowner balks at a $25,000 renovation quote. She asks what the current, slow contractor costs each month. The answer is roughly $10,000 in piling fees. Three more months of delay is $30,000. So the $25,000 job saves three months and $5,000, "or am I not understanding the math?"
The pattern is a loop. Ask a question, let them answer, reframe their words back to them, ask again. You're a curious buddy, never an opponent. By the end, the buyer has done the selling.
Buyers believe the gap they describe themselves
The second mistake is the wrong message, and the fix has three parts: current state, future state, and the bridge between them.
Picture the same client twice. One version is tired, overpaying and doing things the hard way. The other bought, and has it handled. The seller's job is to make that gap visible and make doing nothing feel expensive. Sanchez compares it to sitting in a friend's new car: your old car didn't change, but now you want something you didn't want an hour ago.
Where most reps go wrong is the order. They spot the gap and start pitching. Sanchez wants the buyer to name it. She cites an Ohio State University study showing people are more persuaded by arguments they generate themselves than by identical arguments from someone else, because their own reasoning doesn't feel like being sold.
In practice, her team pushes for specifics on the current state. For a business owner considering her Boardroom program, that might be: you haven't done a P&L review, so how much are you overspending? The owner guesses $100,000. Sanchez writes it down and shows it back to them.
"Once they've said it, they own it."
Then comes the future state, still with no pitch. What would change if this worked? Often the answer involves time more than money: making it to a kid's practice, finally hiring a chief of staff.
Only then does the product appear, as the bridge. The pitch is mostly the buyer's own numbers read back to them with a solution attached. Discounting also loses its footing at this stage. Haggling over price looks odd next to a $100,000 return and more evenings at home.
Proof should make doubt feel a little silly
The third mistake is weak proof. Anonymous praise saying "they're the best" does nothing, and neither do vague claims like "we clean homes better." Sanchez's standard is to name a specific problem, a specific solution and a specific return, then back it up.
She grades proof in three tiers:
- Bad: no name, no photo, generic text.
- Good: a name, a photo, a screenshot that looks like a real message.
- Great: all of that plus before-and-after images, or ideally a video of the customer talking.
Her own showcase case is a DJ named Steven Rice, whom she says grew from about $500,000 to more than $1 million in annual revenue within a few months of joining her community. The public thread includes his confirmation, his photo and the steps he took. She also turns wins into written stories with names and numbers attached, stacking enough evidence that disagreeing starts to look foolish.
Then she adds an anti-sell. She tells prospects she can't help everyone, that most people will do nothing with what they learn, and that an average owner who won't execute should stay out. Admitting limits is itself proof: it tells buyers she isn't desperate for their money.
The best closers pick buyers who are already hurting
The fourth mistake is selling to the wrong person, and Sanchez calls the principle behind it one of the most profitable lines she knows:
"You don't sell anyone anything. You find the people already predisposed to want the thing that you are selling."
Her "magnet and repellent" avatar, drawn from her book Own or Be Owned, sorts buyers along four lines. Good buyers are financially ready, reliable, a fit for your playbook, and energizing to talk to. Bad buyers are stretched, chaotic, misfit and draining, the kind who ghost and push scope.
Oxygen or dessert
She pairs this with a diagnostic. Oxygen is a purchase where something breaks if they say no: a burst pipe, a missed payroll. Dessert is a nice-to-have. A roof caving in finds a budget. A roof that just looks dirty doesn't.
If you sell dessert to someone who thinks they're buying oxygen, the call feels great and the deal goes cold a week later, because nothing was actually on fire.
Close by talking less
Read together, the four fixes describe one behavior. Believe the price, ask instead of argue, let the evidence speak, and choose buyers whose pain is already loud. Each step shifts the persuading onto the buyer.
Sanchez's summary is blunter: shut up long enough to let somebody else do the selling for you. The practical test for your next call is simple. Count how many of the numbers in the conversation came out of the buyer's mouth instead of yours.
