If your sales are slow, the problem isn’t your leads.
It’s what you’re doing with them once you have them.
Ray recently appeared on two podcasts with millions of downloads, both focused on closing. And what he shared on those shows is exactly what most reps are getting wrong every single day.
The Two Real Reasons You’re Not Closing
After coaching hundreds of reps and speaking to massive sales audiences, Ray has narrowed it down to two primary blockers.
Reason one: you’re not talking to enough people.
You don’t need a massive ad budget to fix this. We’ve never had more access to people in history. Even someone with minimal social media presence is connected to hundreds of potential prospects. Cold market messaging works when you do it right, and there’s no excuse for an empty pipeline.
Reason two: you focus on your solution before you understand their problem.
This one is costing you more sales than you realize.
Posture Check: No one cares about your solution until they feel understood in their problem. Lead with questions, not features.
The Podcast Pitch That Proved the Point
Right after recording a podcast where Ray spent an hour teaching exactly this principle, the podcast host pitched him.
She went straight into a six-minute rundown of packages, deliverables, features, and benefits. She listed everything her service could do. It felt like 20 minutes.
Only after all of that did she ask: “So, what are you trying to achieve?”
That’s the question that should have come first.
And it’s the same mistake most reps make. You talk about your ketones, your water filtration system, your tallow, your VIP travel club, your branch chain amino acids. You know everything about what you’re selling.
But you haven’t asked what they actually need.
Posture Check: The question “what are you trying to achieve?” is worth more than a six-minute pitch. Ask it first, every time.
How to Fix It: Dig Deeper Than the Surface
When Ray talks about understanding a prospect’s problem, he doesn’t mean accepting a surface-level answer.
If someone says they want to “make money” or “lose weight,” that’s not the problem. That’s a symptom.
You have to go deeper. Ask follow-up questions. Find out why making money matters, what losing weight would mean for their confidence or their relationships, what’s actually at stake for them.
When you find that real problem, and then you connect your solution directly to it, the close becomes natural. The prospect doesn’t feel sold to. They feel helped.
Look back at your last 10 conversations. Did you actually know the specific problem each person was trying to solve?
If the answer is “not really,” you now know why those deals didn’t close.
The Fix Is Simpler Than You Think
It’s not about getting better leads. It’s about having better conversations with the leads you already have.
Ask first. Listen second. Present your solution third, and only after you’ve connected it to what they actually told you they need.
That shift alone can recapture 30% of the sales you’ve been leaving on the table, and more importantly, 30% of the lives you could have changed.
If you want the full framework for posture, position, and closing, Ray’s free 90-minute training is available at Posture, Persuasion & Closing the Sale. Enter your name and email and watch the whole thing.
Stop blaming your leads. Start upgrading your conversations.
