How to stand out in sales: lead with empathy and authority

Executive overview

Most sales reps default to pitching their company or product. Customers aren't looking for that. They need two things: to feel understood, and to trust you can solve their problem.

The best sales reps act as guides, not heroes — they win by expressing empathy and demonstrating competency.

The two things every customer needs

• Empathy: repeat the customer's problem back to them — show you understand their pain
• Authority: demonstrate you've seen this problem across many customers and know how to fix it
• You encounter more people with a given problem than any single customer does — that makes you the expert
• Together, empathy and authority check both boxes in the customer's mind

A simple pre-call technique

• Before any meeting or email, write two lines on a post-it note
• Empathy line: "I understand you've been struggling with this — I see it a lot"
• Authority line: "We've solved this for thousands of customers by doing X"
• Sprinkle both into the conversation naturally — don't script a pitch around them