Conventional sales wisdom sales focuses on practicalities: lead with value, get to the point and show prospects you know them. Identify pain and be a problem solver. Yet, many “good” cold calls end abruptly. We get hung up on, or our email is marked SPAM. The reason why will surprise you.

Tone. Your tone reflects inappropriate status.

Speak from too high, you'll condescend. Too low, you sound like a beggar. 

The missing link is emotion. Making seeking emotion your purpose.

You probably think your purpose is:

1. to get an appointment,
2. persuade the other person to meet,
3. demonstrate value,
4. build rapport or
5. uncover the pain of potential customers.

But you would be wrong to believe this. These are outcomes—the results of your efforts.

None of these are your purpose.

Your purpose is to seek emotion. Knowing the difference between outcomes and your true purpose is critical to success. This is one of the most transformative principles shared by the ancient Stoics: Having a firm purpose.

To avoid sounding like a sales person start seeking emotion—rather than what everyone else does. That's why they sound like a turd! They sound persuasive, subservient. Low status.

Avoiding sounding like a salesperson when reaching out, managing objections, or simply trying to stay motivated requires having a firm purpose. And elevating your status.

By the end of this post, you will have the confidence needed to reinvent how you communicate—so customers ask YOU for the meeting. And ask YOU to engage more deeply.

All thanks to your new, high status purpose: Seeking emotion.

Emotion, not value

Why do you sound salesy? Because you're doing what everyone else is. You're focusing on delivering value, developing rapport, etc. etc. Here's what most salespeople miss: When interrupting with a cold call or email you’re interacting with their emotional brain first—not their logical one.

Read that again. It's that important.

Remember—avoid sounding like a problem solver, a value-adder. That's left brain. That's what 90% of the noise coming at them sounds like. That's what 90% of sellers do—and why they sound like a sales person!

Salesy shit. Low status.

Focus on emotion. The right brain. Sounds counter intuitive I know. But it's a high status tactic.

Today's best sellers know: Prospecting requires more than strong email copy or value propositions. Too logical. Instead, immediately recognize and work with the emotional element. 

Customers' tone, pace, and choice of words reveal an emotional state, even if subtly. Even via email.

As Shawn Sease, the "Professor of Prospecting," puts it: "Cold calls end abruptly for the same reason weak emails get ignored: failure to start a genuine two-way dialogue."

Duh. But here's where it gets cool. Shawn says we must train ourselves to automatically detect their emotional state and, "Engage in the same style of conversation."

He's boiled it down to 3-styles of conversation:

1. Practical (decision making/problem-solving)
2. Emotional (Fear/Uncertainty/hear me/listen to me/understand me)
3. Social (Who do you know/where have you been?)

Shawn recommends always treating the first call as emotional—not practical. I really like that.  Because focusing on emotion allows you to provoke, rather than persuade.

Provoking is a high status gesture. Persuading is low status. Persuasion makes you sound salesy!

Adding value sounds salesy

Practical advice like “lead with value” or “get to the point” often fails to address the emotional undercurrents of a conversation. These conventional approaches can feel mechanical, leaving prospects disconnected.

For example, starting a call with, “Hi, this is [Name] from [Company], and I wanted to discuss how we can help you with [specific need],” might seem polished. But if the prospect is feeling overwhelmed or wary, the pitch falls flat.

Because it doesn’t acknowledge their emotional state.

Here's an example. A prospect responds to your cold call with a clipped, “I’m busy right now.” It’s tempting to assume they genuinely lack time. However, this word choice often signals frustration or resistance—not dismissal.

Nor disinterest!

Focusing on emotion forces you to recognize this difference.

You'll start doing it instantly. You avoid sounding salesy PLUS this gives you a simple, comfortable tool to work with.

For example, challenging the prospect by questioning the status quo is a high-status tactic. Recognize, customers may not be honest with you, nor themselves for a number of valid reasons.

Shawn Sease highlights the opportunity these moments provide: "There's nothing better than a skeptical prospect saying, 'Hold on, say that again?'" 

This phrase signals emotional engagement. Skepticism reflects curiosity, and curiosity creates an opening for dialogue.

In email exchanges, the challenge intensifies. Without vocal cues, sellers must read between the lines of a prospect's language. A terse reply like "Not interested" might mask hesitation or a fear of being sold to.

Recognizing these implicit emotions will guide your next move. As will not always accepting the surface level appearance of customers' words.

Reframe your purpose

Misunderstand your purpose and you’ll be chasing meaningless numbers; clinging to outcomes you desire. You will wrongly believe these to be your purpose. Instead, make seeking emotion your purpose.

Think of it this way: The purpose of sales outreach is to facilitate self-reflection of the other person.

This allows them to discover and then demonstrate emotion. Rather than you persuading them to feel a certain way—or accepting your meeting request—facilitating emotion allows them to begin convincing themselves.

They discover a deep motivation—to ACT on their challenge or objective.

Best of all, when your customer demonstrates any kind of emotion—positive or negative—the probability of them buying increases.

Remember: Your purpose is not to persuade customers to agree to a meeting. You cannot tell them how to feel. But you can, instead, help them decide if they are emotional enough to explore an issue with you.

This means guiding prospects to reflect on three critical questions:

1. Do they have a problem they need to solve?
2. Do they accept this problem as significant?
3. And do they feel ready—emotionally and practically—to address it?

Activate, don't implant

In facilitating this “conversation with themselves” we are seeking to activate a thought that is already within the prospect’s mind. In other words: It is not your job to implant a thought that is not there. This is persuasive and pushes them away. Instead, your job is to activate and leverage a thought that is already inside them.

This PULLS them. Attracts them to you. 

The true purpose of sales outreach is not to convey information—it’s to facilitate emotion.

Not create it. Facilitate it.

This requires tuning into the prospect’s emotions and responding in ways encouraging openness.

Imagine this scenario: A prospect sighs audibly and says, “I don’t have time for this" when reacting to your cold call. Instead of diving into your pitch, (persuading) you pause and acknowledge the emotion behind their words. 

“It sounds like I’ve caught you at a bad moment." Then nothing. Avoid what average, low status (needy) sales people do -- ask to call back "at a better time." Let the silence do the heavy lifting for you.

Make a high status move.

This small shift respects their emotional state while leaving the door open for future engagement. Without making you look salesy, subservient or needy.

Shawn suggests a simple way to transition from emotional resistance (on the first call) to logical conversation (on the follow up call a few days/weeks later).

“If you get out of that (first) call and do the follow-up, you now reference the original call rationally. The emotion is gone, making it easier to transition into practical dialogue.”

Recall the 3-styles of conversation:

1. Practical (decision making)
2. Emotional (fear, uncertainty)
3. Social (where have you been?)

This principle applies equally to email. Acknowledge subtle emotional cues in the prospect’s response, then adjust your tone accordingly.

Here’s what I’m learning from our Academy members and my own experience. It is usually smart to respond to these expressions—whether you're calling or emailing.

Consider responding because "not interested" often means:

• "I’m unclear about what you're saying" or
• "I'm not, right now, able to talk about this" or 
• "Currently we use ___ [competitor] for that" or
• “I don’t have the budget right now.” 

As often as 7 out of 10 times, “Not interested” does NOT mean, "No -- go away jackass!" It means the message sent tapped into latent interest. 

Facilitate

The great Stoic philosophers teach us to focus only on what we can control. It is not possible to control whether a prospect takes your meeting. Nor can you control how customers react to outreach messages or discovery meetings. Trying to control usually involves persuasion. Low status.

You can, however, control your purpose and facilitate introspection on the status quo. You can provoke. That's a high status move. This is where most sales folk get it wrong.

When your purpose is to add value or persuade, you feel off-balance. Like you’re chasing something just out of reach. But if your purpose is to find emotion... to help customers genuinely reflect on their current situation... you’re grounded.

You’re effortlessly attracting. And then guiding rather than persuading.

Here’s why this matters to you: Sales is full of challenges. Customers will push back. They’ll hesitate. They’ll go silent. But when your purpose is clear—to seek emotion and foster curiosity—your challenges won’t feel so overwhelming.

An objection will no longer be a roadblock. Instead, you’ll see push-back as an opportunity to ask, “What’s holding you back from solving this problem?”

Or when the customer hesitates to go forward—you won’t see it as rejection. Instead, you’ll see it as a moment to facilitate.

You’ll ask: “How do you feel about moving forward?”

Suddenly, you’re not scrambling to overcome. Because you’re helping the customer find their own reason to move forward. And this aligns with a core Stoic idea: Detach from outcomes.

Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

Focus on the process, not the result. That’s what gives you the strength to stay steady, no matter how rough the waters. That's how to avoid sounding salesy when interacting with customers in any context.

“Good” cold calls and emails fail not because of weak pitches but because they miss the emotional dynamics at play. By recognizing emotional cues, maintaining a high-status mindset, and engaging prospects on a deeper level, sellers can transform routine outreach into meaningful connections.