July 2, 2026- I’ve been coaching a rep named David for the better part of a year. Smart guy. Prepared. Genuinely curious about his customers. He walks into a call, builds rapport naturally, and asks the kind of questions that make buyers lean forward in their chairs. He listens. He takes notes. He follows up on what they said three weeks ago. Every customer he calls on likes him.
And yet his numbers never quite get where they should be. Not because he can’t open doors. Not because he doesn’t understand the product. But because somewhere between the diagnosis and the prescription, David disappears.
He does everything right – until the moment it matters most.
The two ways reps fail
We’ve spent decades in sales training teaching reps not to pitch before they listen. The classic bad rep walks in, launches into a product demo before the customer has said 10 words, and wonders why nothing sticks. Prescribing the medicine before knowing the disease. Every sales trainer worth anything has hammered this lesson home, and rightly so.
But there’s a second failure mode that doesn’t get nearly enough attention – and it’s the one David lives in. This rep does the diagnosis beautifully. He asks the right questions, uncovers the real problems, earns the customer’s trust and genuinely understands their situation better than most. And then, right at the moment when the customer is ready to be led somewhere, he hands the prescription pad back to the patient.
He gets vague. He lists features instead of solving problems. He lets the buyer steer. He makes it easy – so easy that nothing actually moves.
We talk constantly about reps who prescribe before diagnosing. We almost never talk about the ones who diagnose brilliantly and never prescribe at all.
Continue Reading in the latest issue of Repertoire Magazine.