Raise a product's price by 1% and profit climbs 8%. Profit, not revenue. Cody Sanchez cites this figure from a McKinsey report and argues it beats the combined effect of cutting costs 1% and lifting sales volume 1%. Most sellers never run the number, because saying it out loud makes them squirm.
After a career on Wall Street and in private equity, Sanchez now owns a dozen businesses through Contrarian Thinking and Main Street Holding Co. She says the portfolio pulls in nine figures a year, and no inborn talent sits behind that income. Selling is a skill, and the people who fail at it are making one of four mistakes: wrong mindset, wrong message, wrong proof, wrong buyer.
The seller who measures the buyer's budget against his own limits
The first mistake kills the deal before you pick up the phone. Fix the other three and it won't matter.
Sanchez calls it "selling from your own wallet." She found it recently while digging into why her own sales team was underperforming. If a rep thinks a $10,000 service is expensive, the buyer will think so too. But if that service solves a $100,000 problem, why fret over $10,000? In her words: you can't measure a buyer's budget by your own just because "you aren't rich enough." Anyone who doesn't believe in the product should leave the company.
"We don't sell price, we sell the solution to a problem," Sanchez says, and the value of that solution is set against what the problem actually costs. Keeping prices low isn't the safe play. She calls it setting fire to your own money.
Desperation leaks into your words, and the buyer smells it
When the mindset is off, it shows up in the language. Sanchez tags a handful of phrases as symptoms of the disease.
- "Just checking in" over and over means you have nothing new to add. A confident seller says: "You came to mind, and I figured this would help."
- "Let me know if you're interested" dumps the work on the buyer and signals fear of leading. Try instead: "Option A or option B, which makes more sense for you?"
- "We can come down a bit on price" admits you never trusted the price to begin with. Try: "Can you see the return you're getting on this investment?"
- Instead of "please keep me in mind": "What you just described is exactly why I'm the right person."
Sanchez won't call any of this verbal trickery. Get the mindset right, she says, and the language falls into place on its own. She points to research from the sales-analytics firm Gong: top performers use the words "you," "your," and "your team" 29% more often than average reps. The average rep is thinking about their commission. The best rep is thinking about the buyer's problem.
The loop that dismantles a discount demand without arguing
When a buyer says "that costs too much," most reps either argue over a discount or go silent. Sanchez runs a loop instead: ask a question, replay the buyer's answer back to them, ask again. The loop runs until the sale closes.
She gives the example of a construction company. The buyer said the price was too high. The question: what is your current contractor's delay costing you each month? The answer: around $10,000 once you count the penalties. The replay: so waiting three more months costs $30,000. Our service runs $25,000. That means you save three months and pocket an extra $5,000, or am I doing the math wrong?
The seller isn't attacking and isn't defending. In Sanchez's words, he's "just a curious friend." By the end, the buyer has sold the product to himself.
The present, the future, and the bridge, with the product arriving last
The second mistake, the wrong message, gets fixed with a three-step structure. Hold two versions of the client side by side: one who didn't buy, worn out, paying more; one who bought, has it handled, earning more. The seller's whole job is to show that gap and make inaction expensive.
Sanchez's analogy: nobody thinks about their car until they sit in someone else's new one. Same commute, just a comfier seat and a bigger screen. That's where the itch to copy is born.
But the seller doesn't name the gap. Citing a study from Ohio State University, she says people are swayed more by arguments they generate themselves than by someone else's, because their own don't feel imposed. So the client has to say three things.
The present state. What hurts? Where are you losing time and money? How much? Sanchez likes to make the buyer say the number out loud, then writes it down and shows it back. One business owner said, "I've got a million-dollar business, and I'm probably wasting $100,000 on ads." Once he says it, he owns the number.
The future state. Where do you want to be? What would it look like if this were already working? The answers come: with a good CFO I'd earn more, and I could make it to my son's baseball practice. The seller still isn't selling anything, just asking. Sanchez reaches for Socrates here: "I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
The bridge. Only at this step does the product appear. "You said you're losing $100,000 a year and can't give your family time. What if there were a process to find that hidden money in a monthly P&L review? An operating system that pulls every task into an SOP?" The bridge builds itself, because the seller is only handing the buyer his own numbers back.
This is where the idea of a discount dies. When you're talking about a $100,000 return and time with your kids, there's no room left for a discount conversation.
Proof means names, photos, and numbers; "we're the best" proves nothing
The third mistake is proof. Say "we clean houses better than the other guys" and it stays an opinion with nothing real underneath it. Sanchez runs three tiers:
- Weak proof: no name, no photo, generic language. Vague.
- Good proof: a photo, a name, a screenshot that looks like a text message. Clearly hard to fake.
- Great proof: before-and-after photos, a Stripe payment link, or a video of the customer speaking directly. Now the customer is selling for you.
Her own example is a DJ named Steven Rice, whose annual income jumped from $500,000 to over $1 million in a few months, Sanchez says. Tweets, photos, thread confirmations, and an account of what he lacked before joining. The goal is to stack up so much proof that disagreeing would make the buyer feel a little foolish.
Pair it with the anti-sell: the counter-claim. "99% of people will do nothing. If you don't put in the work, you'll get everything we offer and earn zero dollars. If you're not a fit, don't come." That admission makes the proof more believable.
Oxygen or dessert: even the best pitch fails on the wrong buyer
The fourth mistake is the simplest, and Sanchez says it's the one that has handed her nine figures again and again: don't sell anyone anything, find the people already ready to buy. Aim a boardroom-grade pitch at someone who doesn't want to grow their business and nothing lands.
The "magnet and repellent avatar" framework from her upcoming book, Own or Be Owned, turns this into a checklist. The good avatar is financially ready, reliable, fits your playbook, and is someone you enjoy talking to. The bad avatar can't afford it, is chaotic, blows past boundaries, and fills you with dread at the thought of a meeting.
Then one diagnostic question: is what I'm selling oxygen or dessert? Without oxygen everything collapses: the water main burst, payroll can't go out, the roof is about to cave. Life goes on without dessert; skip cleaning the roof and it just looks bad. The deal that felt great on the call falls apart a week later because nothing was actually on fire. The more painful the problem, the faster the buyer finds the budget.
The cure for all four mistakes comes down to one habit: ask a question, then stay quiet long enough for the buyer to sell the product to himself. Clients, a raise negotiation, a job interview, the formula holds everywhere. Sanchez makes one promise: fix these and you'll hear "let me think about it" a lot less.
