*note: this was a livestream so start the video at about 2 minutes if you don’t want all the fluff at the beginning and I can almost guarantee you you probably don’t want that fluff. the beef of it begins at ~2m. -John
The noise around AI safety this week is loud enough to drown out the part that actually matters to you. So let me cut straight to what I was working on this morning before I headed out the door.
I was in Claude, working through a proposal. Can’t get into the specifics of what it is, but I can get into what came out of the conversation, because one paragraph Claude produced stopped me mid-read and I just had to share it with you.
Here it is, slightly out of context, but you’ll get enough of it:
“The transparency compounds here too, John. Showing your commission structure openly, while also noting that you initiated this idea rather than responding to a demand, tells this person that what you brought to him is your best read of what his platform actually needs, and that you are willing to stand behind it with visible economics. That combination is harder to manufacture than a polished pitch deck.”
What Claude is describing there is the thing that separates salespeople who consistently build real relationships from the ones who are always starting over. You cannot manufacture earned trust. You can only build it, one honest interaction at a time, by showing up with something real before anyone asks you to.
This is the point I keep coming back to, and it connects directly to something I hear from salespeople in this profession constantly. They know they are good. They know they bring value. But they cannot figure out why the people they are trying to reach keep treating them like just another vendor with a pitch deck. And the answer, most of the time, is that they are leading with the pitch. They are waiting until they are in a room with a prospect to show what they know. They are holding their best thinking hostage until the deal is on the table.
That is backwards.
If you are a unique sales talent, someone who has worked across industries, sold in different environments, read people well, built relationships in places where relationships were not supposed to be built, you already have the raw material. The question is whether you are deploying it every single time you interact with someone, or saving it for the moments when you think it counts.
Every interaction counts. That is the whole thing.
My goal as a salesperson, and this is something I have said for years, is to be one of the best interactions someone has on a given day. That has nothing to do with whether they are going to buy from me. It has to do with whether I showed up with something real, listened enough to understand what they are actually dealing with, and contributed something of genuine value to their situation. If I do that consistently, the sales take care of themselves over time. And if I do not, no pitch deck in the world is going to close the gap.
AI helps me think through this more rigorously than I could on my own. Using it as a 24-7 editor and thought partner, a consultant I can go back and forth with at any hour, has sharpened the way I prepare for conversations, structure proposals, and identify what I am actually trying to accomplish in any given interaction. It is embedded in my workflow now in more ways than I am going to get into here. And I deleted Netflix from my phone and I work on this at night instead.
But the thing Claude said that I keep turning over is that combination of transparency and initiation. Bringing the idea before someone asked for it, and then being willing to stand behind it openly, is what signals to the other person that this is your honest read of their situation. That signal is the hardest thing to fake. And because it is hard to fake, it is the most valuable thing you can build a reputation on.
Bring the insight first. Show the economics. Stand behind your read. That is the pitch deck nobody else is walking in with.
608-845-2252. My desk in Madison. If I’m here, I pick up.
