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The Answer Trap: When Solutions Become the Problem

Surface full of gingerbread dough cut in man shapeYou’ve graduated from Question Obsession 101. You’ve learned not to pepper clients with endless questions or craft that perfect “Keystone Arch Question” expecting miracles. You’re focusing on relationships, creating insights, and empowering clients.

But have you fallen into the next trap? The Answer Trap.

Many consultants who overcome question obsession swing to the opposite extreme, a belief that the ultimate value they bring is the profound, transformative answer that will solve all client problems.

“Just give me the solution,” clients sometimes demand. And we, eager to please, rush to deliver. We believe this is what justifies our fees, demonstrates our expertise, and secures future business. But the Answer Trap is just as dangerous as Question Obsession.

The Obsession with Answers

The world of consulting and sales is awash with “solution frameworks,” “proven methodologies,” and “transformative approaches.” We carry these in our metaphorical hip pockets, ready to unfold them at the first hint of a client problem.

Sound familiar?

  • Do you find yourself mentally fitting client situations into your pre-existing solution frameworks while they’re still talking?
  • Have you ever felt disappointed when a client’s problem doesn’t match your favorite solution?
  • Do you have a mental hierarchy of solutions you’re hoping to sell, regardless of the client’s specific situation?

When you only have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

The Pattern Pitfall

The consulting version of answer obsession materializes in playbooks; the sales version in packages. Both betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what clients truly need.

It’s tempting to believe that, once you show the client your three-phase approach and proprietary diagnostic tool, they’ll be relieved to know you’ve solved this exact problem a dozen times before for a dozen different clients.

They won’t be.

That’s because good answers, like good questions, are necessary—but insufficient. The Answer Trap leads to cookie-cutter approaches, shallow understanding, and solutions that don’t stick. It amplifies self-orientation, the very thing we were trying to avoid by focusing on questions in the first place.

Having the “right” answer isn’t helpful if the client doesn’t recognize that it’s the right answer for them.

Beyond Answer Obsession

The true value of consulting isn’t in the perfection of your questions or the brilliance of your answers. It’s in the collaborative journey you take with clients. Three principles can help navigate beyond the Answer Trap:

Solutions as conversation starters: The best solutions aren’t endpoints but starting points for deeper dialogue. When you offer potential answers, frame them as “thinking aids” rather than final verdicts. “Here’s one approach I’ve seen work in similar situations. What parts of this resonate with your experience?” This invites the client into co-creation rather than passive acceptance.

Customization through collaboration: Generic solutions fail because they lack the client’s fingerprints. The implementation details that make solutions work are often discovered through joint problem-solving. “The framework provides structure, but your team’s knowledge of how decisions really get made here is what will make this successful. How might we adapt this approach to your culture?”

Embracing productive tension: The magic often happens in the space between your expertise and the client’s context. Don’t rush to resolve every uncertainty or smooth every wrinkle. Sometimes the most valuable service you can provide is creating a productive tension that challenges both your thinking and theirs.

It’s not what answer you provide; it’s how you provide it. The best consultants understand that solutions are tools for client transformation, not products to be delivered. The answer itself is less important than the client’s ownership of it, their capacity to implement it, and their ability to evolve it as circumstances change.

Avoid the trap: get past answers for answers’ sake, and focus on building the client’s capability to solve not just today’s challenge, but tomorrow’s as well.

 

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I wrote this blog with the assistance of AI.

The Truth about Sales Rejection: It’s Not about You

Rejected Rubber StampAccording to a recent Braintrust study on B2B selling, only 33% of sales reps consistently hit their targets. Whether that data point reflects inaccurate goalsetting or a need for upskilling, that’s a lot of rejection.

Losing a sale is a challenge that sits squarely at the intersection of business revenue and personal psychology. While it may feel deeply personal, overcoming that loss requires a fundamental shift in perspective.

The Real Cost of Fearing Rejection

Sales professionals who shy away from rejection face a double penalty: missed opportunities and internal turmoil. Without taking risks, you’ll lose potential deals. More insidiously, playing it safe can create cognitive dissonance with your professional self-image, draining energy and focus that could be better spent serving clients.

Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short

Common strategies for handling rejection typically fall into three categories:

  1. The Numbers Game: This approach treats rejection as an inevitable statistic—just keep dialing until you win. However, reducing prospects to mere numbers undermines genuine relationship-building.
  2. The Emotional Block: This method advocates emotional detachment, suggesting you shouldn’t take rejection personally. Yet, denying the human element ignores the reality that sales interactions are inherently personal.
  3. The Power Through: This technique relies on motivation and enthusiasm to overcome rejection. Unfortunately, this often translates to aggressive tactics that may alienate potential clients.

The Narcissism Trap

These conventional approaches share a critical flaw: they frame rejection as something happening to you. This self-centered view mistakenly places the salesperson at the center of every interaction.

Think about it: When a prospect decides not to buy, are they really rejecting you, or are they simply making a business decision based on their needs and circumstances?

Curiosity: A Better Framework

Instead of “handling rejection,” reframe selling as a scavenger hunt. This mindset shift transforms the experience from a personal challenge into an engaging exploration. When you’re genuinely curious:

  • Every interaction is an opportunity to learn, not to lose
  • Dead ends provide valuable market intelligence that can inform other opportunities
  • The focus shifts from self to solutions

Practical Steps for the Curious Salesperson

  1. Develop a Prospect Question Bank: Create a list of genuine questions you’d like answered for each key prospect. Focus on understanding their business, challenges, and goals. Avoid asking questions you already know the answer to.
  2. Document Your Discoveries: Track what you learn from every interaction—even (especially) those that don’t lead to sales. These insights build your market knowledge and inform future approaches.
  3. Stay Present and Engaged: Rather than armoring yourself against potential rejection, remain open to what each interaction can teach you. When your goal is to understand the client rather than to close the deal, you win every time, regardless of whether you make the sale.

The Power of Perspective

Just as ancient astronomers had to abandon their earth-centric view of the universe, salespeople must let go of self-centric interpretations of client decisions. “Rejection” only exists when we position ourselves at the center of every sales interaction.

Success in sales comes not from learning to handle rejection, but from transcending the concept entirely. When you approach each interaction with genuine curiosity about how you might solve a prospect’s problems, the question of rejection becomes irrelevant.

Remember: No one can reject you without your participation in defining rejection. The next time you feel rejected, redirect that energy toward curiosity—you might be surprised at what you discover.

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When Focus Becomes Tunnel Vision

Let’s talk about focus.

Many respected authors will tell you that focus is essential to achieving success. They call it concentration, determination, single-mindedness, resolve – whatever the word, the message is that by focusing on the outcome you want, you are more likely to make it happen.

And it seems hard to argue that being focused is anything but good. It improves the quality of our work, increases efficiency, and contributes to momentum. Focus can help clarify priorities, improve decision making, and reduce stress.

But when we get too focused, we risk getting tunnel vision.

Tunnel vision arises as a medical condition when someone loses peripheral vision, limiting their sight to only what is directly in front of them.

Metaphorically, it means concentrating completely on achieving a particular aim, without regard for anything or anyone else. It limits our ability to see and hear what is important to others. It is the height of self-interest.

Adam Smith, Competition, and Selling

Blame it on Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. The Scottish moral philosopher and economist famously claimed that by the self-oriented struggling of the butcher and the baker, the “invisible hand” of the market makes itself known by balancing out all for the greater good. Out of individual self-interest grows the maximum collective good.

While Smith has been unfairly characterized as arguing against regulation and in favor of unfettered free markets, there’s no question that his powerful formulation rhymes with competition – individuals seeking their own betterment.

Taken at face value, Smith’s primary hypothesis that the collective good grows as a result of individual self-interest defies logic. The deeper context is that individuals specialize to create income-generating goods and services, and in so specializing will pay others for the goods and services they cannot (or choose not to) create themselves.

If only one person (or company) made each thing anyone needed, there would be no competition. But we have long ago demonstrated that monopolies are an economic danger. So we have an economy that is driven by choice – and, so it follows, by competition.

Selling without Competition

It’s hard for most people to even conceive of selling without that competitive aspect between buyer and seller. Isn’t the whole point to get the sale? Isn’t closing the end of the sales process? If a competitor got the job, wouldn’t that be a loss? And why would you spend time on a “prospect” if the odds looked too low for a sale?

When we think this way, we spend an awful lot of energy. It’s hard work – most of it spent trying to persuade customers to do what we (sellers) want them to do. This is never easy (if you have a teenager and/or a spouse, you know this well).

The competitive approach is the traditional, zero-sum-thinking, buyer vs. seller approach – the age-old dance that gives selling a faint (or not-so-faint) bad name. It is one-sided, seller-driven, selfish. Success, in this approach, is defined only one way: getting the sale.

You have to be hyper-focused – have to have tunnel vision – to sell that way.

Seeing beyond the Tunnel

Going back to Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the fundamental context is that wealth is generated by working with the buyer, not against the buyer. Recognizing what the buyer needs that you can provide. Your interests are 100% aligned, not 59%. If you do business by relentlessly helping your customers do what’s right for them, selling gets remarkably easier.

All you have to do is just change the whole approach to selling. You’re not in the competition game: you’re strictly in the helping game, with a partner called your customer/client.

Once you stop focusing on selling what you have to offer, you can see what your client really needs.

You don’t have to think about what to share and what not to. You don’t have to control others. You don’t have to white-knuckle meetings and phone calls, because there are no bad outcomes. You don’t have to relentlessly screen out unqualified leads. You don’t have to practice “handling objections,” because objections are just invitations to further dialogue.

The “trick” is simple: just do the best you can to help the client. Period. Detach from the outcome. Open the aperture. Go where the client conversation takes you. Your goal is not to get the sale. Your perspective is long-term success, not this transaction. Don’t focus on monthly quotas, just go where your help is most needed. Just help the client.

If you do that, two results become clear:

  1. You will not get every sale; you may not get this sale; sometimes you don’t deserve to get it, or the goal changes, or it gets postponed – sometimes you may even recommend a competitor;
  2. In the medium-to-long run, however, you will get more

Selling this way works very well for one fundamental reason: all people (including buyers) prefer to deal with sellers they can trust – those who are honest, forthright, long-term driven, and client-focused. All people (including buyers) prefer not to deal with sellers who are in it for themselves, and constantly in denial about it.

If you give them a choice, they will gladly act on those preferences.

This is where focus is good again: when your concentration is on helping your client, with regard only for what is best for them, you end up with superior results.

You’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Selling Trust into the Sales Process (Episode 40) Trust Matters,The Podcast

Welcome to the newest episode of Trust Matters, The Podcast. Listeners submit their personal questions about professional relationships, trust, and business situations to our in-house expert Charles H. Green, CEO, Trusted Advisor Associates, and co-author of The Trusted Advisor.

Jennifer from a Telecommunications company writes in and asks, “I know you’ve written about Trust-based Selling. My question is not to ask you to explain Trust-based Selling, but instead how to SELL the Trust-based Selling approach into my sales training team?  What’s the hook? The business case? How can I get them to consider it seriously?”

Do you want to send your questions to Charlie & Trust Matters, The Podcast?

We’ll answer almost ANY question about confusing, complicated or awkward business situations with clients, management, and colleagues. Email us: [email protected]

Trust Matters, The Podcast: Set Up for Failure By My Boss – Special Guest Andy Paul, Author & CEO, The Sale House (Episode 23)

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Trust Matters, The Podcast: Building Trust When Industry Spirals Into Cutthroat Pricing (Episode 13)

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Trust Matters, The Podcast: Competing on Competitors’ Lower Rates (Episode 12)

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Blurring the Line Between Sales and Marketing

I got an email from, Ralph, the 50-ish owner of a small consulting firm. He had three competing offers to buy his practice, and a few complicating life factors. He wanted advice, and asked if we could talk.

I don’t do much coaching or consulting, and he almost surely couldn’t afford my rates. Nor am I an expert in life planning, or in valuations.

But I said sure, call me in the morning, we’ll talk – no charge.

We had a very good chat for about 45 minutes.

I think I helped him. I know it was useful for him to talk to a third party able to comprehend his situation. I believe he’ll make a better decision, and I’m sure he’ll feel better about it. Value was created for him in our talk.

But How Does Free Advice Help the Advice Giver?

But what about me? I knew going in there was no chance of a sale from him – not now, not in the future, not anytime. And my rate was zero. Was this a foolish, impetuous, soft-hearted, flakey thing to do?

No. I like doing nice things, but I’m not a saint. Nor did I consider Ralph a pro bono case.

Sure, it was a nice thing to do. But, I would argue – it was also good business.

Sometimes a sales lead that we would otherwise screen out can be a good marketing investment. Sometimes you can do well by doing good. Sometimes we need to blur the  line between sales and marketing.

“Ralph” will never buy from me (though other Ralph’s have done so). But he will remember what I did for him; even more, that I was willing to help.

Remember: Ralph invested time in searching for alternatives, chose me, and felt strongly enough to seek me out. He spent time to find out who I was, what I did, whether and how I might be useful to him. He was probably willing to pay for consulting. He was an educated, willing buyer, a near-client with influence on other potential clients.

For me, he was not a qualified sales lead. Instead, he was one helluva marketing resource.

Ralph now knows me – the sound of my voice, how well I think on the spot, the way I interact, my sense of humor. He knows me better than one of 200 people in an audience for a speech; much better than 500 people reading this blog, or an article of mine.

Total investment: 45 minutes. Most sales people will tell you that’s an extravagant waste of sales time, an inefficiency that is off-scale. Just think of the waste in extrapolating such activities to scale!

But most salespeople would be wrong. This is not about efficiency in selling: this is about effectiveness in marketing. (And let’s not forget, I also learned some things about valuations).

Let’s say Ralph will tell a dozen people about our discussion. Those are people who understand what each of us do, and who are first-degree connections to Ralph. That’s a powerful testimonial. Sounds like a reference to me; better yet, one freely given.

The choice is not between being “good” or making money; they often go together.

Try, for just a few hours per month, shifting your sales practices to subsidize your marketing by investing in a lead.

Don’t get lost in charge-back accounting and tit-for-tat favor-record-keeping. The benefits will eventually accrue to your firm, and to you personally. Both.

Trust Matters, The Podcast: The Cult of Closing (Episode 10)

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Being a Competitive Seller vs. Being a Trusted Advisor

“What are the most important personal attributes for finding the right balance between being a trusted advisor, and being a competitive seller?”

That was the question teed up by a Google sales training leader earlier this month at a Talks at Google session with Ryan Serhant. It’s an intriguing question. (The answer, not so much).  But first, some back story.

The Background

Ryan Serhant is known to most people for his reality TV show Million Dollar Listing, about New York real estate. Personally, I prefer his most recent show, Sell It Like Serhant, which also happens to be the title of his recent book, subtitled “How to Sell More, Earn More, and Become the Ultimate Sales Machine.”

Let me just say: Serhant gets a lot right – very right. He’s also extremely personable, with very good interpersonal instincts, and a compelling personal story.

A (partial) list of what he gets (very) right about sales: the idea that people want to have a personal connection; the importance of improvisation; the emotional journey of buyers; the role of buyer insecurities and the need to recognize and address them; the importance of metaphors and stories; the critical role of personal selling; and many more.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Back to the Question

Remember, the question raised by the sales training leader was ““What are the most important personal attributes for finding the right balance between being a trusted advisor, and being a competitive seller?”

Here’s Ryan’s answer. “Endurance, empathy, and enthusiasm.”

Huh?

He goes on to say these are the three traits he always looks for in his own hires, and they’re the keys to all sales that require just a little bit more than a good product that fits the price.

Note he didn’t answer the question. As he mentioned, he had written about those three attributes in his book, so it was a bit of a canned answer. It certainly didn’t address the “balance between being a trusted advisor, and being a competitive seller.”

But in fairness: the question itself is an odd one – it begs many more questions. It posits a tension between being a trusted advisor and being a competitive seller. But can someone be both (as the question implied)? Or is it an either/or proposition? Does it depend on the industry? On types of sales (e.g. B2B or B2C)? Is it really a choice? And if so, what kind of choice?

Serhant didn’t address any of those questions, settling for what is ultimately a fairly conventional description of the key personal attributes for successful selling of all types. It left me unsatisfied. So of course I wondered how I would have answered.

My Answer

In most industries and situations, the question is a false dichotomy: in fact, the best way to compete successfully is to be a trusted advisor to one’s prospects – to practice Trust-based Selling.

What’s my evidence? In its simplest form, if a prospect thinks I have more endurance and enthusiasm than you do, but trusts you more than me, you’re going to get the business more than half the time. (Empathy – Serhant’s third item – is also critical to trust-based selling, so no argument there).

The biggest difference between Serhant’s proposition and trust-based selling is profoundly simple:

  • Serhant is focused on the seller’s success as the end goal
  • By contrast, the end goal of trust-based selling is doing the right thing for the buyer.

In one approach, competitive success is the goal. In the other, it’s a byproduct.

The answer to the questioner’s dilemma is to reject the question. It’s not a question of balance, nor is it an either-or proposition. It is how you get from one to the other.

You don’t gain trust by being competitively successful nearly as much as you gain competitive success by being trusted.

Common Threads

Interestingly, a lot of what Serhant suggests fits equally well in trust-based selling. You have to have empathy; you have to take risks; you have to understand and appreciate emotions.

But there are tells. Serhant shares a touching story about the power of fear: how he is motivated by never wanting to go back to a dark period in his life, defined by stark failure and rejection. We can all relate.

But fear of failure is a very private, internal emotion: it doesn’t help connect us to our clients, it separates us from them. If not getting the sale is part of the fear, then we haven’t conquered it – in fact, we’ve made our clients hostage to our personal pursuit of overcoming fear.

Trust is a relationship. But competitive sales, the way Serhant defines it, is a personal adventure, with clients as means, not ends. He is very insightful about the need for connection: but he never mentions relationships.

There are differences in tactics between the two approaches, which I’ve written about at length elsewhere. But this is the bedrock difference between the goals of the two approaches from which they all flow.

At one point in the interview, Serhant notes how he consciously prioritized success over career. If your goal is personal success, being a great seller is a great way to get there.

But if your goal is your clients’ success, you will, paradoxically, end up a more successful seller yourself. Because buyers trust more those whose goal it is to help them, rather than to help themselves.