Making Sense of Sales — What Every Prospect Wants to Know Immediately
A prospect says, "Tell me about your company"—and the rep delivers the full tour. History, equipment, capabilities, awards. It sounds professional. It's completely irrelevant to what the buyer is actually trying to figure out: Do you get what I'm dealing with?
Doesn't matter if you're selling commercial print, packaging, or wide-format. Buyers aren't shopping for a company profile. They're dealing with tight timelines, inconsistent quality, pricing pressure, operational chaos, internal politics—and they want to know fast if you've seen it before.
Leading with credentials tells them nothing. Leading with problems gets their attention.
The discipline here is stopping yourself from answering "Tell me about your company" with a pitch. Instead, anchor the conversation in what you see constantly in their world. When a rep can articulate the buyer's pain better than the buyer can, they've earned the right to keep going.
There's also a built-in qualifier: if the prospect doesn't recognize the problem, there's likely no deal. If they do, you're already aligned.
Sales Leaders: Listen to how your reps open their first calls this week. Are they talking about equipment and capabilities? Or are they talking about outcomes? That's where the gap usually lives.
The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.
- Categories:
- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Emily Yepes is a powerhouse sales trainer and revenue producer who lives at the intersection of sales theory and real-world execution. What sets her apart isn’t just her deep knowledge of sales doctrine —it’s that she’s still in the trenches, consistently ranking in the top 5% of over 400 Sandler sales executives worldwide. She brings that same performance-driven mindset to every training room she enters. Emily coaches the sales teams of printing and packaging industry leaders, including JS McCarthy Print+ Packaging, The Packaging School, Canadian Printing Industries Association, Norkol, ImageMark, and Sonoco on everything from prospecting and consultative selling to negotiation and account management. Her average training score? A near-perfect 4.9 out of 5—proof that her clients don’t just learn from her, they love learning from her. She doesn’t deal in hype. Emily brings a practical, psychology-based framework to sales, helping professionals rethink the way they approach buyers, conversations, and themselves. Her philosophy is clear: great salespeople aren’t born—they’re trained. With the right mindset, anyone can learn to breakdown buyer resistance and build real trust that lasts. Approachable, direct, and refreshingly honest, Emily’s training style resonates with sales teams at every level. Her sessions leave people not only inspired—but equipped to sell more and sell better.
