If you want to pickup some sales alpha from a lot of high-paid sales pros, this is the edition for you…

BTW: Our “live from the sales floor” section has been moved to the bottom of the email, don’t miss it!

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There's a move called unselling. You take something off the table before the buyer asks you to. It works well.

Might sounds backwards. You're a salesperson. Why would you voluntarily shrink the deal?

When I bought a car a few months back, the finance guy ran through a list of add-ons. But he didn't pitch a single one. He started crossing things off himself.

"You're buying a newer car. You probably don't need the extended warranty on top of the manufacturer coverage, right?"

Right.

*Crosses it out*

"Honestly, the tire and wheel protection, you're fine without it. You’ve got pretty big tires on it, it’s rare that you’ll damage those on the street"

Crossed it off before I could say anything.

By the time a final product list and number showed up on the screen, I had already agreed out loud that I didn't need the other stuff. Whatever was left felt completely reasonable. Not because the price was low. Because I was the one who decided the package made sense for me.

He didn't remove friction himself. He got me to remove it for him.

A few things are happening at once when you do this correctly.

The adversarial frame breaks. Every buyer walks in with some version of "this person wants my money." The second you start taking things away instead of adding them, that assumption falls apart. You're suddenly the person on their side.

A commitment loop forms. When someone says out loud "I don't need that," they own that call. They're not going home to second-guess you. They already talked themselves out of the objection before you even got there.

Whatever's left feels like the right answer. Not a compromise. Not what they settled for after pushing back. The actual fit.

But the catch is it has to be real.

Dropping a $1,000 product to $29 because it's a "limited offer today only" is not unselling. That's a fake anchor, and buyers don’t believe it. The second they stop believing the original number was real, the whole method unravels.

This only works when the numbers are clean and the logic is visible. Which means the best version of unselling is less of a sales tactic and more of a product packaging decision. You need components that actually stand on their own so that removing one makes obvious sense to the person watching.

The dealership pulls it off because the checklist is sitting right there. You watch them cross things out in real time. The math changes in front of you.

If you can build your offer that way, people will actually thank you for providing an experience that felt different from every other sales conversation they've had. And that feeling is what they’ll remember when they send someone else your way.

Most reps are so focused on collecting as much money as possible, and they never consider the diminishing returns to this approach. Sometimes the path to a bigger relationship (and more referrals) is a smaller first transaction, structured right, with someone who feels like they actually won.