There's a classic sales test: hand someone a pen and ask them to sell it back to you. It's a fun party trick, and it has never taught anyone how to actually run a business.
This is not that. This is nine things that decide whether whatever you actually sell - product or service - gets bought. All nine matter. Skip one and the other eight get harder to use.
1. Fix the offer before you fix your pitch
Look at what you're selling before you look at how you're selling it. A bad offer beats even the best salesman alive. A good offer sells itself past the worst one.
An offer comes down to four questions - this is Alex Hormozi's value equation, from $100M Offers. What does the customer get? How sure are they that they'll actually get it? How much effort and sacrifice does it cost them? How long do they have to wait?
Almost every business works on the first two - the outcome and the proof - because that half is enjoyable, and because every competitor already has it too. Working harder on it changes nothing. Almost nobody works on the last two: how much trouble it is to buy from you, and how long before it pays off. That is where the money actually is.
Here's what that looks like in a shop you already know. Bhatbhateni sells vegetables pre-washed, peeled and cut, sitting in a packet - the same vegetables piled loose two metres away, for less. The packet removes the work of going home and doing it yourself, and that is worth paying for. Nobody has to stand at that shelf and sell it. The offer does the job on its own.
Shrink the customer's effort. Shorten their wait. Those two beat any script you could write.
2. Trust the law of average
Nobody sells to 100 out of 100 people. Not one person alive has ever managed it. Nobody sells to zero out of 100 either - even the least pleasant shopkeeper you have ever met still sells to somebody. You live somewhere in between, and your job on any single day is not to win every conversation. It is to do the selling activity properly, every day, and let the average do the rest.
That means having an actual process - what you say when someone walks in, what you ask, when you ask for the order - written down, followed, improved. And it means leaving your day at the door. Whatever is going on for you personally, you still greet the person in front of you properly.
A no is not proof that you cannot sell. It might be the product. It might be a reason you never find out, that has nothing to do with you. Either way, taking one no personally is the wrong response. Understand the average, and keep going.
3. Listen more than you talk
If you stop listening, they will stop buying.
Get good at listening and two things happen together. You hear the real problem, in the customer's own words, so you can hand the offer back to them in language they already used. And they feel something most people rarely feel in an ordinary conversation - actually heard. Almost nobody in a customer's daily life listens to them properly. If you do, you have already made them like you, and people buy from people they like.
4. Answer a question with a question
Whoever is asking the questions is running the conversation.
A customer's first question is almost always the price. Answer it straight, and you are immediately defending it - explaining why it costs what it costs, justifying every detail while they pick it apart. You just handed them the wheel.
Try this instead: "Of course, I'll tell you the price - can I first ask what you're actually trying to achieve?" Now they are talking, and you are back to listening.
5. Find the thing you actually share
This is not a trick. It is how the brain reads safety. Someone who thinks and acts like you is predictable, and predictable feels safe. Someone different is unfamiliar, and unfamiliar reads as risk.
A small, real example: I like chess. I like the gym. I like business. Mention any of those to me and I will like you a little more, automatically, without deciding to. That is true on both sides of any sale. Find the genuine thing you actually share with a customer and let it come up naturally - forced or obvious, and it does the opposite.
One version of this to be careful with, because it costs the most when it goes wrong: never argue a customer's politics or their religion, even when you disagree, even when you are right. You will not change their mind in one conversation. You will lose the sale trying.
6. Be a consultant, not a seller
Nobody wants to be sold to. Everybody wants advice.
A doctor does not sit you down and start operating. He takes your history, runs a test, tells you what he actually thinks - and then you decide. That is the posture: you are there to help someone make the right call, not to move a unit.
Here is the blunt way to picture the opposite. Imagine a goat could understand human speech, and a butcher walked up and said, "hello, I'm a butcher." That goat has no interest in the conversation that follows. The moment a customer clocks you as a seller, the same thing happens in their head - they assume you are there to take something from them, and the guard goes up.
The hardest version of this rule: if someone genuinely does not need what you sell, do not sell it to them. You lose one sale. You gain something worth more - a reputation as the person who tells the truth even when it costs a sale.
7. Build liking and trust
Show proof. Show testimonials. Be consistent. Never lie.
The one that catches people off guard: be careful with jokes. A joke that lands feels like it is building rapport, but every joke spends a little of the trust you are building, because it breaks the pattern of being the steady, reliable person someone is deciding whether to hand money to.
8. Ask for the sale
Most people never do this part. They explain everything well, answer every question, and then just wait.
Say it. "Take it." Make the ask out loud, plainly. If you are afraid to ask for the sale, nothing above this point matters - you did all the work and stopped one sentence short of using it.
9. Treat every objection as answerable
"It's expensive." "Let me think about it." "I'll come back tomorrow." Every one of those is an objection. None of them is a no. The only real no is a no.
Don't let a customer walk away on one of these. Agree with them first - "you're right, it's not cheap" - then ask the question that finds what is actually going on: "if price wasn't the issue, would you take it?" Now you know what you are really dealing with. You will not overcome every objection. Most of them, you will.
Where to start
Not with a script. With the offer.
Look at what you are actually selling this week - not your pitch, the offer underneath it. Where can you cut the customer's effort? Where can you shorten the wait? Fix that first, and the other eight get easier to use.
Which of the nine are you already doing, and which one is missing from your business? Tell me in the comments - I read them.