The most important skill professional salespeople have (and how you can use it!)

What This Episode Is About

You’ve invested in a sales strategy. You’ve done the training. So why aren’t you getting the results you expected? In this episode of the Selling to Corporate® podcast, Jess Lorimer reveals the single most important skill that professional salespeople use to create consistent, replicable results - and it’s almost certainly not what you’d expect.

Jess makes the case that the gap between coaches, consultants and professional salespeople isn’t intelligence, experience or even strategy. It’s one surprisingly simple skill that most business owners overlook, underestimate or quietly choose to ignore. This episode explains exactly what it is, why it matters more than any tactic or technique and what happens to your sales process when you don’t use it.

Who This Episode Is For

• Coaches, consultants, trainers, speakers, and done-for-you service providers selling to corporate clients

• Anyone who has invested in a sales strategy or programme and felt it ‘didn’t work’

• Business owners who find themselves constantly tweaking, adjusting, or second-guessing their sales process

• Those who are great at selling one offer or to one type of client, but struggle to replicate that success elsewhere

• Anyone who suspects their sales process isn’t producing consistent results but isn’t sure why

Questions This Episode Answers

• What is the most important skill in B2B sales?

• Why does a sales strategy that worked stop working over time?

• How do professional salespeople create replicable results across different industries and offers?

• What’s the difference between buying a sales strategy and actually executing one?

• Why does tweaking a sales process - even slightly - make results impossible to measure or replicate?

Key Takeaways 

1. The Most Important Sales Skill Is Following Instructions

The single most important skill professional salespeople possess is the ability to follow instructions precisely and consistently. Not prospecting. Not objection handling. Not closing. Following instructions.

Jess is direct: in her experience working with thousands of professional salespeople and thousands of coaches, consultants, speakers, trainers, and done-for-you service providers, the difference in results almost always comes down to this. Professional salespeople follow a proven process exactly as written. Most coaches and consultants - however intelligent and however well-intentioned - don’t.

This isn’t a criticism of intelligence. In fact, Jess argues that high intelligence can be a liability here. Smart people are more likely to spot what feels ‘wrong’ about a set of instructions, more likely to rationalise a small adjustment and more likely to believe their version of the process is ‘good enough’. It usually isn’t.

2. Any Proven Strategy Has the Ability to Work - If It’s Executed Properly

Jess teaches seven different methods of B2B lead generation. She has clients who generate all of their corporate revenue from cold email outreach. She has clients who generate all of their revenue from networking alone - a method she personally dislikes. The method is not the determining factor. Execution is.

The two reasons a sales strategy fails are almost always the same:

• The strategy being used is not proven. It was built in an AI tool, borrowed from a B2C context or sold by someone without hands-on B2B sales experience.

• The strategy is proven but it is not being followed correctly. Steps are skipped, wording is changed, volume is reduced or the process is quietly adjusted whenever something feels uncomfortable.

If your sales process is not producing results, the first question to ask is not ‘what strategy should I try next?’ It is ‘am I executing my current proven strategy exactly as intended?’

 

3. Small Changes to a Sales Process Create Big Problems

One of the most common patterns Jess sees with experienced clients is a gradual drift away from the original process. It rarely starts as a conscious decision to change strategy. More often it starts with a lost deal, a knock to confidence, and a small adjustment made under pressure to ‘save’ the next opportunity.

That one small change leads to another. The language shifts. The attachment changes. The objection handling softens. The reassurance given increases. None of it feels significant in the moment. But cumulatively, the process becomes unrecognisable - and critically, it becomes impossible to measure, troubleshoot or improve.

Standardisation is not a constraint on creativity. It is what makes it possible to know whether your sales process is working, identify where it is breaking down, and fix the right thing. When every part of the process is slightly different, there is nothing consistent to evaluate.

4. Sales Should Be Boring - Creativity Comes in the Conversation

Jess uses the analogy of Picasso: before he painted eyes on the sides of heads, he spent years learning the rules of perspective, line and composition. The creative leaps came after the foundations were mastered, not instead of them.

The same principle applies to B2B sales. Your lead generation process, your outreach approach, your proposal structure, your pricing framework - these should be repeatable, measurable and consistent. They should feel a little boring, because boring is what makes them scalable.

The creativity, the consultative problem-solving, the bespoke solution-building - all of that happens in the sales conversation itself, and in the delivery of the work. That’s where you get to be brilliant and distinctive. Your process is what gets you to that conversation in the first place.

5. Following Instructions Builds the Confidence That Creativity Cannot

When a sales process is followed precisely, it produces predictable metrics. Those metrics tell you what is working and what is not - early enough to make useful adjustments rather than emergency ones. That predictability is what gives professional salespeople confidence, even in difficult markets.

When a process is modified and the results decline, the person executing it has no way of knowing which change caused the problem. That uncertainty erodes confidence and often leads to further changes, making the situation worse. Following instructions is therefore not just a technical requirement - it is the foundation of sustained confidence in your own sales ability.

6. Replicatable Success Requires Transferable Process, Not Transferable Luck

Jess draws on her own sales career across jewellery, recruitment, tech, and sales training - including becoming the top diamond salesperson in her region at 16, and a top performer within her first year at a company operating across 30 countries - to make a specific point: success that can be replicated across industries, offers, and client types is built on process, not personality.

If you are excellent at selling one particular offer but cannot replicate that success with other offers or other types of decision maker, it is a signal that your results are not yet built on a transferable process. They are built on familiarity, repetition or relationship - which are not scalable. A proven, correctly executed process is what creates results that transfer.

Key Quotes

“The most important skill professional salespeople have in their arsenal is following instructions.”

“Literally any proven strategy has the ability to work if it’s being done properly. The problem is that most people aren’t using proven strategies - or they’re not following the instructions for the ones they have.”

“Your sales process shouldn’t be where you feel creatively satiated. It should be where you are able to replicate a clear process and be given consistent metrics so you know what is working and what isn’t.”

Resources + Links Mentioned in This Episode

Cold -> Closed

The self-paced B2B sales experience for coaches / consultants / speakers / trainers and done-for-you service providers who want scalable, sustainable sales from brand new corporate clients in 90 days or less.

https://smartleaderssell.thrivecart.com/-cold-to-closed-product/

Join the B2B Sales Edit: Busyness to Business

Weekly newsletter for coaches and consultants; sharing the real B2B sales techniques that have taken over 30,000 sales processes from busy -> balanced and profitable.

https://magic.beehiiv.com/v1/988ac64b-5875-4924-9d10-50faad2aa4ad?email=%EMAIL%

Episode Sponsored by The Expert Services Directory

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If You've Enjoyed Listening to The Most Important Skill Professional Salespeople Have, Check Out These Episodes

STC159 - Mindset Wobbles That Stop Your B2B Sales Progress (and How to Fix Them!)

https://bit.ly/SellingToCorporate159

STC162 - 3 Things That Will Help You Maximise Any Sales Training You're Embarking On

https://bit.ly/SellingToCorporate162

STC171 - The Simple Sales Technique I Use to Sign Corporate Clients Every Month

https://bit.ly/SellingToCorporate171

 

Content Disclaimer

The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.