This week, I’ll share some sales common sense that isn’t very common.

I had a meeting with someone from whom I was seeking advice, and the start of this meeting was terrible. It took this person 20 minutes to talk to me all about their company, the various founders, the journey they’ve been on, and why they do what they do. To be honest with you, I was just so bored.

That really changed my impression of this company. Before meeting with them, I thought, “Here’s a really good company, I think they can help me out.” But the salesperson completely ruined the experience for me. I don’t know why sales teams do this, because Sales Training 101 is to ask questions, find out what customers want, and then talk about the stuff that they want. All the salesperson had to do was ask me, “What do you need? Why is that important to you?” If I’d given them a list of needs, they could have put them in some sort of priority order and then spoken about their solutions and how they could help me solve my problems.

Please, please make sure that your sales teams aren’t spewing all over their prospects. Ensure that your sales process is carefully designed to dig into what is important to the customer. I don’t care how long you’ve been in business, I don’t care that you’re a family business, I don’t care about the 13 founders of the company who spent 15 years looking for the perfect solution to ABC. I don’t and never ever will care.

All I care about as a consumer, as a customer, is that my problem is causing me some sort of pain or discomfort and I want it sorted out. All I want to know is: Do you understand my problem? Is your solution credible? Do I trust you? The worst way to build trust is to go on about yourself without understanding me.

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