Your Team Is Losing Deals Because They’re Selling Too Much

How do you know if your team is great at discovery? You could listen to all their calls, but that takes time. Instead, ask them one simple question about an opportunity:

Why should the buyer buy?

If the answer is something like “Because they don’t have our product” or “Their process is inefficient”—your team isn’t actually getting anywhere or acting like an analyst. They’re just pushing a solution without proving why change is necessary. They are in fact, selling too much!

Think Back to the Last Deal Your Team Lost

What did the buyer say?

• “We’re going to hold off for now.”
• “We decided to go in a different direction.”
• or most likely, ghosted

If that sounds familiar, your team likely didn’t lose because of price or competition. They lost because they failed to help the buyer analyze their own business and determine whether change was worth it. That’s the difference between a traditional seller who is focused on selling and a seller who thinks like a business analyst.

Selling to Sell vs. Analyzing to Win

A seller who is only focused on selling a product and getting to the outcome….

• They ask surface-level discovery questions.
• They look for any mention of pain or a problem, and as soon as the buyer mentions a problem, they start pitching a solution.
• They bring up budget, timeline, and decision-makers too early.
• They rush into demos and pitches before truly understanding the business case.
• They are feature experts who can talk at length about what their product does.

I get it. Buyers have problems, and sellers have solutions. But this approach assumes buyers fully understand their own problems, and most of the time, they don’t. That’s why deals stall, deal sizes stay small, and customers churn after a year. Many were sold a product, not a solution to a problem they actually understood.

A seller who acts like a business analyst takes a different approach.

• They don’t just collect surface-level information. They analyze it.
• They connect the dots between the problem, the business impact, and the root cause.
• They push buyers to question their own assumptions and assess whether solving the problem is worth it.
• They build a case for change, quantifying the cost of doing nothing.
• They don’t rush to a demo. They put together a data puzzle and offer insights that shift the buyer’s perspective.
• They totally detach from the outcome.

Leadership Gut Check Time

If your team is struggling with long sales cycles, stalled deals, or constant ghosting, it’s probably not your product, pricing, or competition. It’s that your sellers are too focused on selling instead of analyzing.

The best sellers don’t pitch. They don’t just check a discovery box and move on.

They help buyers see what’s really happening in their business. They quantify the risk of staying the same. They build a case for change.

So the real question is: Is your team selling, or are they helping buyers make a business decision and acting as if they are a business analyst?