Engagement tests and face-to-face trust

Here’s a question that cuts to the heart of what makes sales hard: What do you do when your commodity is identical to every competitor’s, the buyer knows it, and the only lever they want to pull is price?

That’s the challenge Ash from Chennai, India brought to me on a recent Ask Jeb episode. Ash works as a trader importing textile goods from Asian manufacturers and selling them into Spanish-speaking markets in South America and Spain. No proprietary product. No unique features. Pure commodity, all the way down.

And yet Ash is holding customers. Getting repeat orders. Building relationships across borders and languages. He just needed a framework to understand why it was working and how to make it work even harder.

The Trap Every Commodity Salesperson Falls Into

When everything looks the same, most salespeople default to one of two bad moves: race to the bottom on price, or get paralyzed trying to explain a value they can’t articulate.

Here is the brutal truth. Your buyer already knows the product is a commodity. They know they could go direct to the factory and cut you out entirely. They are not confused about that. What they are evaluating is whether the risk and hassle of cutting you out is worth the savings. Your job is to make sure the answer is always no.

That requires you to stop thinking about what your product does and start thinking about what YOU do.

Three Reasons Customers Keep Buying From Ash

When I asked Ash why his good customers keep coming back, he gave me three answers that every salesperson in a commodity business needs to write down.

You make it easy. Ash speaks Spanish. His customers speak Spanish. If they go direct to a Chinese or Vietnamese factory, they face language barriers, cultural friction, and communication breakdowns. Ash eliminates all of that. Business people will pay for less hassle. Time is money, and you are saving them both.

You are someone they like and trust. Ash follows up. He wishes customers a happy New Year. He remembers what matters to them. That is not fluff. That is relationship equity that compounds over time. When customers feel like they can trust you, when a familiar voice picks up the phone, they do not want to start over with a stranger.

You reduce financial risk. In Ash’s business, buyers put down a 20% deposit, sometimes a hundred thousand dollars or more, and pay the balance when the container arrives. The nightmare scenario is that container showing up full of the wrong product. Ash’s company has been operating for over 20 years. They do what they say they are going to do. That longevity is not just a stat. It is a security blanket.

The Power of the Micro Story

Knowing your value is half the battle. Being able to articulate it when a buyer pushes back on price is the other half.

Here is what I told Ash: You need stories. Not case studies. Not bullet points. Short, vivid, real stories that make the risk of cutting you out feel tangible.

Something like this: “I get it. You could go directly to the factory and save ten percent. Some of my customers tried that before working with me. One of them got a container full of product that was not what they ordered. It cost them more than they saved, and they had no one local, no one they trusted, to help them fix it. That is why they work with me now.”

That story is doing three things at once. It validates the buyer’s instinct to compare prices. It quantifies the real cost of the cheaper alternative. And it positions you as the solution to a problem they have not had yet but definitely do not want.

If you are newer to sales and do not have your own stories yet, go talk to your senior teammates. Read industry articles. Find examples of what goes wrong when buyers skip the middleman. Then make those stories part of your standard value conversation.

Not Every Buyer Is Your Buyer

This is the part that stings a little, but it is important. Some buyers are going to push back on your margins until the conversation goes nowhere. They will tell you the price they need, and if you cannot hit it, they will walk. That is okay.

What they are telling you is that they do not value what you bring to the table. They want the cheapest option, and that is a legitimate business decision. They are just not your customer.

Your job is not to convert every skeptic. Your job is to keep your pipeline full and find the buyers who genuinely value ease, safety, and responsiveness. Those are the ones who become long-term accounts. Those are the ones who, two or three years in, cannot imagine buying from anyone else.

Ash is already doing this well. He has visited customers in Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. He has done office meetings and factory tours. When a customer says yes to a visit, they are telling you something: you matter to us. That is what I call an engagement test, and Ash is passing it.

Your Value, Packaged Simply

In commodity sales, your pitch does not need to be complicated. It needs to be consistent. Here is how I would frame it every time a buyer pushes back:

I make this easy for you. I am responsive. And your money is safe with me.

Then back each of those up with a story.

That is the whole game. Not features. Not specs. You.

When you are tired and ready to wrap up the day, remember this: the prospecting you do today pays you for the next three months. Pick up the phone and make one more call. The buyers who value what you do are out there. Go find them.

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