Christian PolkYour Friendly Neighborhood Sales Trainer

Here's how i'd open up a "reserved" prospect

16 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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A prospect gives short answers and mentions hockey, suggesting a reserved, rural background. The coach recommends three steps: pre-frame the conversation to normalize reservation, ask direct impact questions like "How does that affect you?", and reward any openness with explicit appreciation.

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Absolutely. Okay, well, what sort of things do you miss out on? Just their sports activities, just hanging out, doing stuff.
So just, just notice with how he's talking, he's a bit reserved and he's a bit short. And I'm going to assume that it's just by his natural like just way of being. He seems like he's talking about hockey. He sounds Canadian. Probably in a very rural area, which is just not as normal for a guy to talk about his feelings as much. Now. That's what I'm going to assume. So I'm hearing this type of resistance. What I'm going to start to do, just pre frame it a little bit. It's like, yeah, man. And this is something like unfortunately here too often. So how does that actually affect you? I'll start to normalize it and then I'll start to reward him. When he does actually say something that is open, it's like, hey man, I appreciate you being open about that. So that way again, I can start to move him more in my direction.