Negotiation is a gunfight, where information are bullets
I have explained this to salespeople hundreds of times and the analogy lands every time because it is exactly right.
Negotiation is like a cowboy gunfight where information is the ammunition. The more you bring to the table, the more bullets you have in the fight. Walk in knowing nothing about your opponent and you step into the arena with one shot. You had better make it count, because if you miss, the fight is over.
Sales Is Partly Forensic Science
Most people think of sales as pitching. Presenting. Talking. And pitching matters, no question. But a significant part of what separates good salespeople from exceptional ones is what happens before a single word is spoken in the sales conversation itself.
We call it discovery. The art of learning more about someone before, during, and after a conversation. Sometimes, when I explain it to new reps, I call it stalking. That gets a laugh. But I am not entirely joking.
Discovery in the room is the skill of asking open questions that get people talking and revealing more than they intended to. But that is the surface layer. The deeper version is preparation. The research that happens before you walk through the door, or dial the number, or join the call.
John and Mary
Two sales reps. Same appointment.
John gets the booking and walks in the door. He knows the company name, the person he is meeting, and what he is selling. He is quick, he is confident, and he has one good shot lined up.
Mary spends fifteen minutes before the call looking for clues. Not skimming a website. Actually looking, with genuine curiosity and genuine empathy, for everything she can find that will help her understand who she is talking to and what actually matters to them.
What is the company and what do they stand for. What is their approximate revenue and how many offices do they have. What do they sell and who do they sell it to. Were they in the news recently. Are they growing or contracting. Who is the specific person she is meeting and what can she learn about them. Do they have a dog. What causes do they care about. What football team do they follow. What are their hobbies.
That last cluster matters more than most salespeople think. Business is conducted between humans, not between companies. The person across the table is not just a job title. They are a specific individual with a specific set of things they care about, and the salesperson who has taken the time to learn even a few of those things enters the conversation in a fundamentally different position.
Now the gunfight happens.
John may be quicker on the draw and shoots his shot. But Mary has prepared her position. She understands the terrain. She has formulated what she is going to say based on a real picture of who she is talking to. John can take his shot. Mary can take several, and each one is more targeted than the last.
The Maths of Preparation
I tell my staff this directly. Rather than spending fifteen minutes making five cold calls, I would rather they spent ten minutes sitting with the prospect’s photo and profile, formulating exactly what they are going to say and why it will matter to this specific person.
That trade feels counter intuitive in a sales culture that has been conditioned to measure activity by volume. Five calls is more activity than one call, so the temptation is to optimise for calls made. But five unprepared calls into people you do not understand is almost always less productive than one highly prepared conversation with someone whose world you have taken the time to understand.
The call that opens with a genuine reference to something specific about the prospect’s business, something they recognise as real knowledge rather than a rehearsed opener, is a different conversation from the first moment. The prospect’s guard is lower. Their curiosity is higher. They are talking to someone who has already demonstrated, before making a single pitch, that they did their homework and that their time is worth something.
That is the value of bullets. And you only get them by doing the work before you walk in.
What Good Discovery Actually Looks Like
The person questions tell her who she is actually dealing with. What they care about outside of work, what they are proud of, what they are worried about, what kind of conversation they will respond to. A person who coaches junior football on weekends and a person who runs ultra-marathons and a person who volunteers for a particular cause are all different humans and they all deserve a different version of the conversation.
The news and growth questions tell her what is live in their world right now. A company that just opened a new office is in a different state of mind than a company that just announced redundancies. A person who was just promoted is in a different headspace than a person who has been in the same role for eight years. Context changes everything. Everyone buys in unique ways. Stop selling the way you buy because it’s familiar.
The Competitive Advantage Nobody Is Using
Most salespeople do not prepare this way. Not because they do not know it works, most of them would agree in the abstract that research helps. But because the pressure of volume, the need to hit call targets and fill the calendar, makes deep preparation feel like a luxury rather than a necessity.
It is not a luxury. It is a competitive advantage that the majority of your competitors are leaving on the table every single day.
The salesperson who consistently prepares at the level Mary prepared is operating with more information, more empathy, and more targeted ammunition than anyone walking in cold. Over time, that consistency compounds in ways that cold volume never does.
Step into the arena with full cylinders. The gunfight is easier when you are not relying on one shot.
For more on sales preparation, discovery, and the disciplines that build consistently high-performing sales functions, there is more at www.outsold.com.au/blogs.
