Stop Saying This on Sales Calls (It Hurts Your Deals)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Perpetual Traffic

Episode: “Stop Saying This on Sales Calls (It Hurts Your Deals)”

Host: Ralph Burns (CEO of Tier 11)

Featured Guest: Oren Klaff (Author, Pitch Anything & Flip the Script)

Date: April 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into one of the most counterintuitive, yet powerful approaches to sales: removing “please” and “thank you” from your sales vocabulary. Ralph Burns hosts renowned dealmaker and author Oren Klaff to challenge traditional, subservient sales tactics. The discussion explores the psychological mechanics of status in persuasion, practical strategies to assert power without alienation, and actionable ways marketers, founders, and sales professionals can claim authority and close high-value deals. The conversation is grounded, occasionally irreverent, and packed with memorable insights.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Destructive Power of Neediness in Sales

Oren Klaff recalls a pivotal lesson:—the moment he realized that “neediness kills deals.”

• Anecdote: During a tense, multi-million dollar deal, a colleague sent a blunt all-caps email: “LOSE MY NUMBER.” To Oren’s astonishment, the deal closed 10 minutes later, not in spite of, but because of this bold display of non-neediness.
  • “What I learned there is neediness kills deals. ...How can you sell to someone and need something, but not show neediness? Living in that gray area became the meaning of my life.” —Oren Klaff [02:25]

2. Why “Please” and “Thank You” Lower Your Status

• Klaff’s Core Principle: Constantly thanking, apologizing, or supplicating signals low status to prospects, undercutting your authority and credibility.
  • “Stop fucking saying please and thank you so much.” —Oren Klaff [06:27]
• Mechanics of Status:
  • Saying “please” and “thank you” becomes an addictive way to earn dopamine hits and win minor “points,” but these are superficial victories that ultimately cede power.
  • “When you say please, thank you, and I’m sorry to a sales prospect, they know they have the high-status position in the relationship.” —Oren Klaff [08:45]

3. Practical Alternatives: Small Acts of Defiance

• How To Flip the Frame: When clients join calls late, Klaff suggests subtle maneuvers to shift the status dynamic.
  • Instead of opening with “Thank you so much for your time,” say:
    “Hey, are you here for the 12:35 meeting? The 12:30 meeting is just wrapping up.”
    [10:23]
  • “So this scares young people to say it... but I always go, ‘Hey, Jim, you here for the 9:13 meeting?’ They always say, ‘I’m sorry.’ Now I’ve reversed gravity. Now you’re apologizing to me.” —Oren Klaff [10:43]

4. Frame Setting & Status Alignment in Sales

• You Cannot Sell From a Low-Status Position: The goal is not to overtly dominate, but to align or elevate your status so you’re respected and truly heard.
  • “If somebody has higher status than you, they have some physical things that happen in your body: One, you don’t listen well to the low status person... Number two, you take risks with them that you would not take with somebody higher status.” —Oren Klaff [13:47]
• Tactics Stem from Self-Respect & Values:
  • To elevate status, anchor yourself to a clear value system—not just making money.
  • “If there is a perception that you don’t stand for anything other than money, you will occupy the low status position and sell from discounts.” —Oren Klaff [15:09]

5. Handling Discount Demands & “Final Boss” Negotiation Tactics

• Challenging Last-Minute Power Plays: Oren breaks down how big organizations send in a previously absent “final boss” to demand last-minute concessions.
  • “If you discount this, we can’t do customer service properly. ...If you want to stomp around saying, ‘We’re Microsoft and we want a discount,’ let me know. But that’s not how we build a relationship.” —Oren Klaff [18:50]
• Call Out the Performance Boldly:
  • Acknowledge the negotiation game, question the logic, and stick to your boundaries.

6. Why Most People Default to Subservience—and How to Escape It

• Ralph’s Perspective: Sales teams revert to old habits because of a deep desire to be liked and a fear of rejection.
  • “You don’t ever want to be the supplicant… everyone wants to be liked and is so afraid of upsetting the prospect because, ‘If I upset them, then they won’t buy.’ When in fact, the opposite is true.” —Ralph Burns [22:12]
• Oren’s Prescription: Small acts of playful defiance, setting firm boundaries, and sincere expression of values will earn real respect—and better deals.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Stop fucking saying please and thank you so much.” —Oren Klaff [06:27]
• “Neediness kills deals.” —Oren Klaff [02:25]
• “Are you here for the 12:35 meeting? The 12:30 meeting is just starting to get going, and might even wrap up.” —Oren Klaff [10:23]
• “When you say please, thank you, and I’m sorry to a sales prospect, they know that they have the high-status position in the relationship.” —Oren Klaff [08:45]
• “All the tactics stem from: you have to have one, a value system that you are anchored to.” —Oren Klaff [15:09]
• “When you have power, what you do is you exert your control? Is that what you’re saying? ...That is not how we build a relationship.” —Oren Klaff [20:04]
• “You don’t ever want to be the supplicant, but everyone wants to be liked and is afraid of upsetting the prospect because, if I upset them, then they won’t buy. When in fact, the opposite is true.” —Ralph Burns [22:12]

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Timestamped Guide to Key Segments

• [02:25] — Oren’s story: The “Lose My Number” deal and the discovery of power in non-neediness.
• [05:36] — Sales process as a series of skill levels (101 to 201): Why removing supplicant language is foundational.
• [06:27 - 08:45] — The psychology of “please” and “thank you”; why these words cost you status and money.
• [10:23] — Exact phrases to use when prospects arrive late; “Are you here for the 12:35 meeting?”
• [13:47 - 15:09] — The science of status in sales and why your value system must lead.
• [18:50 - 20:04] — How to respond to big company “final boss” tactics and last-minute discount asks.

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Actionable Takeaways

• Eliminate subservient language (“please, thank you, sorry”) from sales calls.
• Set the frame from the start with subtle status signals (acknowledge lateness, establish boundaries).
• Anchor your positioning in your (and your company’s) authentic value system.
• Politely but firmly challenge unreasonable requests—especially at the end of negotiations.
• Remember: Respect in sales is earned by claiming your space, not by constantly seeking approval.

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Episode Tone & Style

The banter is candid, witty, and often irreverent—reflective of Oren Klaff's characteristic style. Ralph facilitates with honesty, echoing the challenges most marketers face in shaking old sales habits. There’s room for humor, but the advice is concrete, assertive, and focused on shifting mindsets for stronger negotiating and closing.

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For more resources and links referencing books, frameworks, and episodes mentioned, visit perpetualtraffic.com.

Transcript

[Ralph Burns]

Wow.

[Unidentified Enthusiastic Listener]

You guys are the real deal. I'm on my seat right now.

[Oren Klaff]

Well, we appreciate it. In tier 11, we care about your business. That's a big deal for us.

[Unidentified Enthusiastic Listener]

I am speechless. Yeah, you guys did your homework. So smart. And the fact that your team intuitively figured that out without me having to kind of go into that is just music to my ears. I mean, they really did the work here. I'm so blown away. This is all so spot on. This audit was really great. I'm ready to go. I do feel like I'm in good hands.

[Ralph Burns]

All right, I'm going to make you a bet. Give us two weeks with all your ad accounts, your creative, your funnel and your data, and we'll find at least one thing that's costing you real money that nobody has ever told you about. Now, we do this audit for $10,000, but right now we're opening up for free to a select group of brands because we're so confident that we're going to find at least one thing that is costing tens of thousands of dollars that nobody has ever, ever discovered before. So if we're wrong, you lose nothing. If we're right, you'll wonder why nobody showed you this sooner. Head on over to tier11.com audit today and apply for our free $10,000 audit.

[Oren Klaff]

You cannot sell to someone from the low status position. Does not work. Stop saying please and thank you so much.

[Ralph Burns]

Maybe just give the folks sort of an overview of what I feel is an incredibly solid and effective persuasion strategy.

[Oren Klaff]

Where all the T stem from is you have to have one.

[Ralph Burns]

You're listening to Perpetual Traffic. Hey, real quick. If you're looking to get your brand in front of growth minded marketers, CMOs, directors of marketing and agency owners, we're opening up our sponsorship spots for Q1 and Q2. Get in front of a quarter of a million marketers every single month at Perpetual Traffic. All you have to do is head on over to perpetualtraffic.com or for the details or check out the link in the show notes to apply. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11. And I am super excited for today's show because this is one of the most popular shows that we've done in the last six months to a year here at Perpetual Traffic. So without further ado, let's get into today's episode. We're going to continue to go back to these shows which have gotten lots of views and lots of downloads. So take it away Boys, we were

[Oren Klaff]

in a deal and I needed the closing fee on it. The guys that we were selling the deal to were being very difficult, right? And they kept asking questions and wanting more information and not closing. And it was a couple million dollar wire. So back then, it was before Gmail, you just had Microsoft and it would ding when your email rang. The ding, right? And we're tracking this deal, we're trying to close it. I really need the commission. Jonathan sent an email to everybody. 15 people copied on it, the subject line, all caps, three words, lose my number in the middle of a deal. And where I came from, like, nobody talks to anybody like that. I came from. My dad was a college professor and both my parents are academics. I went to, you know, very conservative institutions and I worked in very conservative banks. So all caps emailed to 15 people in the middle of a deal. It says, lose my number is like, this is done, right? There's no reality in which this is moving another millimeter down the road. And then ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. And I'm expecting all the fu. Deal done. And all I start seeing is, we're sorry, sorry, Jonathan didn't mean to be. And the deal closed 10 minutes later. And I said, I said, what alternate universe am I in? And then I started noticing that, you know, he had the ability to really is never be needy. And what I learned there is neediness kills deals. So how can you both be selling somebody and needing something and wanting something and needing the commission or needing the traffic or needing the relationship and at the same time wanting it, loving it, being enamored with it, desiring it, and fundamentally in your DNA, maybe economically actually needing it, but not needing it at all. And living in that space became the meaning of my life. Learning how to live in that gray area with wanting something with my heart and desire and mind more than anything else, but not wanting it at all.

[Ralph Burns]

I think that's the hardest part of, of sales, in my opinion, because you always want the sale. But if you come across, and I remember just coming across that concept and pitch anything and then obviously, and it, it shows up and flip the script as well, is like that idea and then trying to teach that to like my sales teams. And it's the hardest thing. And you gave an example and flip the script where you go out to North Dakota and you try and teach people how to do this for. I forget the name of the. It's like a motor, like a cool motorcycle Star.

[Oren Klaff]

Real company. Yeah, GP Star.

[Ralph Burns]

And I was like, how the hell. And you didn't really say, like, how you did it. They just started selling more. I'm like, how did he figure out how to do that? And that's. Everybody's been in this situation where it's like, you know, so what do you think? You know, like, trial closes always be closing. Like all of that sort of bull crap that we learned in sales school. It's like, it's the opposite is true. And I'm teaching my sales teams now in my own business how to do it, and they're like, I'm amazed that this actually works, but then they fall back into these same old traps. Like, how do you do that? Because that's like a theme throughout both books, which I think is super important to comprehend.

[Oren Klaff]

I think there's a 101, you know, just like college, there's a 101, a 102, a 103, a 201, and then graduate level work. So maybe I can give you some insight onto, you know, the various levels. You know, I've taught 80,000 people from stage these couple of techniques. So I know, because they'll come back the next day or that afternoon, and they go, I just closed a $300,000 account. I did that yesterday at work. I did it. I got myself respect back. That's greatness, whether make the money, close deals or not. But if somebody doesn't have to live in fear of clients and accounts and sales managers and can live knowing that they ended the day with grace, poise, self, respect, left it all in the field and let it all work itself out. That, to me, is an amazing gift, and I think it starts here. Stop fucking saying please and thank you so much.

[Ralph Burns]

Mm.

[Oren Klaff]

And I'll tell you why. There's nothing wrong with please and thank you and I'm sorry. I myself say I'm sorry twice a year.

[Lauren]

Twice a year, Christmas and your partner's birthday.

[Oren Klaff]

Maybe not that often, but it sounds good on a podcast. I don't want to say. I don't want to say zero. It sounds really.

[Lauren]

Are you about to apologize for lying? Did we get our one for the year?

[Oren Klaff]

I will say, Lauren, I appreciate how you feel. I can understand that. It's miserable. I mean, misery. This is what I will tell sales prospects at this point, Lauren, let me tell you how it all ends. The sun burns out and human civilization goes away. All right, so before that happens, let's try and figure out how we're going to do this together. The reason we got to stop saying please, sorry, and thank you is there's nothing wrong with those. You cannot modulate it. So unless you just take it away completely, you're just going to use those fillers for emotional dopamine pings. You'll get some. The reason you do it is you get something for it. You get. Attention, please. Thank you. I'm sorry. Gives you points in, in the game. You know, you're trying to win points, you're trying to win commissions. Right? You're right. Oh, I just got another, you know, I just got another couple points in the game. This call continues.

[Ralph Burns]

Hey, here's what scares me about this industry. Brands are spending $50,000, 100,000 DOL, $300,000 a month, and nobody has ever actually looked at the full picture. Not the platform, the full picture, the creative, the traffic, the landing pages, the data, all of it together. We do. It's a $10,000 audit that takes us just about two weeks to do it here at tier 11. And right now we're going to do it for free for one last brand that qualifies. If you've ever thought something's off, but I just can't. You can't figure out what. Then this is for you. Head on over to Kieralev.com audit and apply for your free $10,000 audit today.

[Lauren]

I mean, I know it's so true because there are times where I've been like, just, just apologize. Just gosh dang it, like, apologize like I don't understand. Like, it will help you so much more. From my ego's perspective, for someone to admit that they were wrong, I'm like, just apologize. But yeah, I'm 100% keeping score as young salesperson.

[Oren Klaff]

Ralph can't modulate those words. And those words are supplication. And when you say please, thank you and I'm sorry to a sales prospect, they know that they have the high status position in a relationship, the power number two. So if that's 101, and I'll give you a way to make that happen. If you get on a call, give me a example of salespeople that you work with and who they get on a call with.

[Ralph Burns]

The habit. I always. First break is, is thank you so much for meeting with us. It's like all, you know, it's the first mistake, I think, you know. Thank you so much for taking the time.

[Oren Klaff]

Give me the setup. Who is the salesperson? Who is a client? What are the stakes? What's the size of the deal?

[Ralph Burns]

Average size deal for us is about a quarter of a million dollars a year. ARR. And it's a sales prospect in the E commerce niche. And you know, it's a sought after like beauty brand that probably a lot of agencies are coming after. And the first thing that the salesperson wants to say is thank you so much for taking the time to meet us.

[Oren Klaff]

Got it. I'm gonna fix that right now. That's good. Cause it's a good high stakes sale. Who's the buyer? Who's typically on the line?

[Ralph Burns]

It's usually the director of digital, the director of marketing, something like that. So it's not usually the CEO at that level, but it's. Sometimes it can be they'll bring them in every now and then. But usually yeah, it's somebody who reports to somebody else for sure.

[Oren Klaff]

Self entitled, high status, feels that they have the control in the relationship, feels like the power in the relationship belongs to them. Right. 19 out of times those guys come to the zoom or the phone call a few minutes late. Fair.

[Ralph Burns]

Absolutely. Every single time, yes. Just like I do.

[Oren Klaff]

Except today, 100% of the time I will say, hey Ralph, are you here for the 12:35 meeting? Because the 12:30 meeting is just starting to get going and might even wrap up.

[Ralph Burns]

Small acts of defiance.

[Oren Klaff]

Are you here for the 1235 meeting?

[Lauren]

That's bold, that's good.

[Oren Klaff]

So this scares young people to say it where. So unfortunately I go to meetings yesterday. Guys who manage billion dollar funds multiple times, billionaires definitely. Guys worth 20, 30, 40, $150 million. I've helped people sell multiple, multiple companies, you know where they walked away the 100, 130 million dollars. I deal with people who are self enamored, self empowered, feel like they have the alpha position in every deal no matter what. And they always come to calls late and I always go, hey Jim, you here for the 913 meeting? And, and guess what? They always say always. I'm sorry. Oh God, now it just went backwards. I reversed gravity. Now you're apologizing to me. And this is set up correctly, it

[Lauren]

was your wicked moment defying gravity.

[Oren Klaff]

So that's 101102. Stop saying sorry, please stop saying sorry.

[Ralph Burns]

But potentially prompt them to say sorry is sort of the 102.

[Oren Klaff]

Listen, this is why. Because in our culture everybody understands the value of time. Billionaires understand the value of time. Even if you are the guy doing the valet. They book the valet, you know, for know, 3:00pm they show up at 3:05. The valet guy goes, hey, I've been waiting for you. The first thing I'm out, say Are. Sorry. I'm sorry. That's our culture. Timeliness is one of the most respected early signals of a having a quality value system that matches in with our Judeo Christian political social culture that we have here in America. People who don't understand the value of time don't go far in our system. It's just how we work. I don't know how they do in Scandinavia. I don't know how they do it in Nicaragua. That's how we do it here. As you said in Ironman, we're pretty good for dad, we're pretty good for me. And that's how the government does it. Introducing the Jericho.

[Lauren]

Yeah, but you didn't like the second and third one though, because it was just one out of them.

[Oren Klaff]

Yes.

[Ralph Burns]

If you're doing the marketing for a brand that's doing $10 million a year or more and you're spending real money on paid media, I have a question for you. When's the last time someone sat down and showed you, dollar by dollar, where your money is going and what it's actually doing? I'm not talking about a dashboard. I'm not talking about a weekly report, a real audit done by real strategists and who have real experience running digital marketing campaigns and advising businesses your size or greater. Well, that's what we do. It costs $10,000 to have this audit done. But right now we're picking a few brands to do it for free. No catch. We just want to show you what's possible. Head on over to tier11.com forward/audit to apply for your free $10,000 audit today. By the way, Oren is the first guest we've ever had in 700 some odd episodes who was a minute early and as was I. I was three minutes early. But that unto itself, you set the frame like, is that the first sort

[Oren Klaff]

of step for that is setting the frame.

[Ralph Burns]

Everyone says frame selling. That's what Oren Claf teaches. He teaches frame selling. I'm like, well, okay, what is it?

[Oren Klaff]

Let me take it a little bit further for your guys. So what you're trying to do is you are taking a very, very, very high status person and you are reducing their status to below yours. This is not game theory, although it is game theory. It is not Machiavellian. It is not intended to hurt people or malign people. But here is the reality. If somebody has higher status than you, they have some physical things that happen in your body when you have high status. One, you don't listen well to the Low status person that's talking to you. Number two, you take risks with them that you would not take with somebody that is higher status than you. Of course, you know risks, they're not medieval risks, but you know they will. Oh, hey, sorry. You know. Yeah. Oh, really? No, the ahi pokey is fine.

[Lauren]

The no, for those listening, you can't see that he's now taking a phone

[Ralph Burns]

call, ordering a phone call.

[Lauren]

Bad fish.

[Ralph Burns]

That's right. Ordering sushi in the middle of a perpetual traffic episode. Yeah. Anyway, but got it.

[Oren Klaff]

When you're trying to get your kid into the Harvard prep school and you're sitting there with the president and the dean of admissions, right. Your phone is on your. You are the lower status party and your phone is on off.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lauren]

So even in the room, potentially, it's in a bag in the code check.

[Oren Klaff]

If it's not on off, your wife is going to turn it into an underwater phone in the women's bathroom. All right? You are not taking any risk. So when somebody views themselves as having more power than you, higher status than you, they don't listen to you. Well, they will take risks around you and. And they will discount the things you say, even if you're an expert in it, to where their own opinion on something they know nothing about will have more weight than yours. You have got to lower somebody's status down to yours or below yours just so they can listen to you. You cannot sell to someone from the low status position. Does not work. And so you've got to bring their status into alignment with yours. Now, there are tactics for doing that, and we can talk about that for an hour, two hours, three hours, nine hours, what? But where all the tactics stem from is you have to have one, a value system that you are anchored to. And I think I did write about that in Flip the Script. If there is a perception that you don't stand for anything other than money, you will occupy the low status position and sell from discounts. So I would love for you guys to attend some of my calls. You know, I'll be on a $3 million investment, you know, had three guys on the thing. They have their CFO on the call, you know, and he'll be going like this. And I'll go, hey, Matt, Lauren, what are you. They're looking at the phone like, hey, man, what are you doing? Like, we're together for 30 minutes, right? If you don't have time for calls, don't book them. Right. Look at me. I came to this call. I have you have a $2 million facility, you know, in which I schedule this call. I've got a. I've got an operator, you know, who operates this call. I take this very seriously. If you don't have half an hour. Right. Who are you? I don't know who you people are. Right. How am I going to take $3 million from you? Now there's the key, Ralph. How am I going to take $3 million from you if I don't know who you are or why you do things? And so you don't. Now, if I asked you, what's your value system? You tell me. Like, what do you believe in Me?

[Lauren]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

I believe in all the stuff that I repeat to my kids, which is do the right thing, you know, be a good person, you know, honest, all that sort of stuff.

[Lauren]

I was like, I've got my two.

[Oren Klaff]

This is a setup. You're just gonna read me the Bible. Okay.

[Ralph Burns]

Right. But no, it's not an answer I would typically give. I would give like the watered down version. Unless we like really got into it.

[Oren Klaff]

You, yeah. You're just gonna. So you, as a young salesperson or a sales manager or if somebody wants to sell, not marketing, you have to figure out what you believe in, not what's in the Bible. Not don't bang your neighbor's wife, not don't, you know, feed your kid chocolate before bed. What do you believe in? And those become your boundaries. And those boundaries are the safest thing in the world to have honesty about. Because if somebody's outside your boundaries, then you're not going to do a deal with them anyway, for sure. And what I seek in a transaction that raises my status and lowers the other person is when they say weird stuff, which the buyer always will, especially the more experienced you are with buyers in your industry, they will say something weird, right? I'll give you an example. If you're dealing with a big company, they'll ask for a discount. Hey, we're Microsoft, right? You know, hey, we represent a big purchase. You know, we always ask for our vendors. What are you talking about? Right? You're saying we're a big company. We have, hold on, let me see. Oh, you have $128 billion in cash, right. We're a nine person company. And you're saying that you want a tiny company to give you a discount for no other reason than you can control them. Right. And you. So when you have power, what you do is you exert your control? Is that what you're saying? How would that feel if we have all your data, right? And then you call in on the weekend and we go, hey, we have, we have now we have all the power. You need some data sorting, you know, over the weekend. It's $50,000 added your account. Or you can wait till Tuesday. How would you, Right? Why in the world would Microsoft, who has the ability to pay for this, want us to? Because if we discount this, we can't do customer service properly. We can't buy AI properly. We can't, we can't. We set this pricing because we have a gross margin in that. Like this is. If you guys want to do a business deal, let me know. If you just want to stomp around saying, we're Microsoft and we want a discount, let me know. I'll give you another example. It always a case where you see the final boss in a deal. You're doing a negotiation, $250,000 contract, right? Everybody's agreeing to it. You're in the final negotiation. What happens is somebody you never heard of has not been in any of the meetings, has never been mentioned, it shows up and goes, hey, what's going on here? Like, you know, we do this all the time, but we need a 15% discount in order to go forward with it. The final boss, it's in every video game, but it's also in every negotiation. And so if you have a belief system and a value system that says this is atrocious to have your executives negotiate for six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks on a quarter million dollars, half million dollar thing, everybody signed off, literally have a docusign circulating and then somebody you've never met before stomp in and go, I can't approve this without getting a discount. And so what I always do, and maybe this is 201, I'll say, hey, John, great, you're done. Right, So a couple of things going on here. One, right? This is just your guys negotiation strategy. And it looks like a goofy thing you guys do. You found that it works over time and you just do it, all right? No problem. Great respect. You pull the performance, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's not going to work here, right? So either, either it's a performance that you guys do and it has worked in the past and you get 15, 20% off for just, you never get. And you, you guys have a belief system that says you never get anything you don't ask for, so you just come in and ask for it. But I'm just telling you that's goofy. This is the real world or there's another option is this is like the real you as a company and yourself, and you guys take up 30, 40 hours of our time. We have a contract going back and forth. We have five people working on this. We've been to seven meetings. We honestly disclose our price, disclose our service. You guys shopped it a little bit, Your executives came together, right? And then the last minute, after all that work has been done, relationship trust, ideas, exposure, risk has been put in place, and then you show up at the last minute, right? And. And you, you know, add chaos, disingenuity, and. And break trust. And if that's who you really are, just tell me, and we will pack our stuff and you can go use India.com, you know, and get it in China or India, right? Or somewhere else. But that is not how we build a relationship. And these deals don't work with our relationships.

[Ralph Burns]

So many of these books are. It's counterintuitive because in the sales process, I'm just speaking, like, whether you're pitching or whether you're selling, it's like, you. You don't ever want to be the supplicant, but you want to be. Everyone wants to be liked and is so afraid of upsetting the prospect because, oh, if I upset them, then they won't buy, when in fact the opposite is true. It's like, you talk about small acts of defiance, but doing it sort of a snarky way or maybe a humorous way, or, you know, take the moral high gr and stick to it and be like, wait a second, what are you talking about? Like, we have. We have a signed contract. Who's this guy coming in and going 15? Like, calling bullshit when you see it. Like, no salesperson I've ever seen, with the exception of maybe one or two, will actually respond to it the way that most normal humans would. Because, like, the sales interaction is like, in this completely different world almost, where it's like, oh, everybody's just trying to be nice to the other one, and somebody's on the high ground and somebody is on the lower ground, and you're like, completely trying to reverse that in so many different methodologies. All the links that I mentioned here on today's show, as well as references to other shows are in the show notes [e-mail] make sure you leave a rating and. Or a review wherever you listen to podcasts allows us to get this show out to a wider audience and teach people how to do digital marketing the right way in 2026 and beyond through metrics that matter and growth that scales. So until the next show. See ya. You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.