By Brian Sullivan, CSP
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.
The doctor who won’t tell you anything
Think about what it would feel like to see a doctor who listened carefully to every symptom, asked all the right follow-up questions, ordered the right tests, clearly understood what was wrong – and then said, “So what do you think we should do?”
You’d be unsettled. Maybe even angry. You didn’t drive to the office, sit in the waiting room and give three vials of blood so you could make the call yourself. You came because you wanted someone who knows more than you to tell you what to do next.
Your customers feel the same way. They answered David’s questions. They opened up about their problems, their vendors, their frustrations and their processes. They gave him everything he needed. They were ready to be prescribed to. And instead of stepping into that role, David stepped back. He made himself easy to talk to – and hard to buy from.
What the authority switch sounds like
The transition out of discovery doesn’t require a personality transplant. It requires a decision – a conscious choice to shift posture from curious to confident. David knows how to be curious. That part comes naturally. What he hasn’t learned to do consistently is make the turn.
It sounds something like this: “Based on everything you’ve shared with me, I believe we have a real solution to the supply consistency issue you mentioned and the credentialing delays that are costing your team time every week. I also think we can improve on a few things that are already working well for you – which is harder to do, but worth the conversation.”
Then you solve the problems. With confidence. With facts. With proof from customers who’ve been exactly where they are.
That’s not pressure, or a hard close. That’s a professional doing the job the customer hired them to do. There’s a meaningful difference between being pushy and being present. The best reps know it. They’ve earned the right to lead – and they lead.
Being liked is not the same as being effective
Here’s the part that’s hard to hear if you’re a David: customers who like you will still leave you. Not because they don’t value the relationship. They leave because at some point, a rep who is willing to actually recommend something walks through the door. And that rep feels, to the buyer, like a resource. Like a partner. Like someone who is genuinely invested in their outcome – not just their comfort.
Being easy to work with is a genuine virtue in this business. It opens doors, builds trust and keeps customers from dreading your calls. But likability without leadership only gets you so far. The rep who is universally beloved but never drives a decision isn’t serving his customers. He’s just keeping them company.
David is better than that. Most Davids are. They just need someone to name the moment they’ve been building toward – and remind them that when the customer is ready to be led, getting quiet is the worst thing you can do.
The diagnosis was never the finish line. It was the setup for the prescription. Don’t leave the patient waiting.
Brian Sullivan, CSP, is the founder of PRECISE Selling and author of “PRECISE Selling: 20 Days to the Top”. With 35 years of experience in healthcare and medical distribution sales, he delivers keynotes, bootcamps, and outsourced sales development for companies nationwide. Contact him at preciseselling.com.