Change the Social Paradigm as a Seller with Belal Batrawy
31 Jan 2026 · 9 min
Podcast episode (host Kevin "KD" Dorsey with guest Belal Batrawy) about sales tactics to prevent revenue leakage by changing the buyer-vs-seller social paradigm. Includes a sponsor mention for Clary's Revenue platform and community plugs for Inside Sales Excellence. Main content emphasizes moving from a conflict frame to an in-group/advisor frame, standing out from generic outreach (farmer's market / "do not be the fruit vendor"), invoking emotions in buyers (fear, anger, humor, etc.) to trigger engagement, and aligning demos with personalized outreach to avoid losing deals.
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Every company has breakdowns in their revenue process. Sure thing. Deals slip into next quarter, competitors creep in and swipe deals away at the last minute, and deals getting single threaded that don't get to power. These are just a few examples of revenue leak, but there are a ton more and they're preventing your team from reaching their sales targets. That's why I'm such a big fan of Clary's Revenue platform is the only tool that actually helps leaders take control of their revenue and thrive through any market conditions, especially when things get tough. You can't afford to miss a single detail, but you also can't be leading by gut. Clary combines the science and the art of sales and sales leadership. So go to clary.com if you want to answer the most important question in your business. Are you going to meet beat or Miss on revenue? Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff.
So the social paradigm of buyer and seller is one of conflict. All right? It's one of competing interests. The buyer wants something, the seller's trying to get as much out of them for it. It's a natural state of conflict. So your role as a seller is to change the social paradigm to something that is more favorable. Like, for example, the paradigm of teacher and student or advisor and advisee or counselor and the one seeking counsel. Right. You can manipulate. I'll give you an example of how M.J. hoffman used to teach this. He used to tell us we were outside sellers at the time. He used to tell us when you go into somebody's office and they offer you a drink of water, you always say yes. He's like, I don't care if you drink a bucket of water, you say yes. Because the act of them getting up and getting you a drink and coming back is the act of what a host and a guest. You're changing the social paradigm so you can do this. As inside sellers, there are ways to manipulate the social paradigm in order to Reach this state where you can disqualify buyers from prospects. All right, so I'm going to show you how you can change the social paradigm. So the simplest concept is this idea of inverse out group. You guys, I'll give you like this right now is a scenario where, you know, I'm, I'm a salesperson. You guys know I'm a seller just like you. If an engineer came in here and started telling us about outbound copy and how to do cold calls, I don't think any of us would take very well to that, right? It's like what business of yours, miss, miss front end engineer to be coming in here and telling a group of sellers about cold calling? Get the hell out. Right? I don't show up to your, you know, Agile meetings and explain to you C. So we have this embedded in our very nature. This idea of some people are in and some people are out. Some people are my tribe and some people aren't. And the best way to change the social paradigm is to show people you're part of their tribe. The in versus the out group effect. You always want to look like you're in, not that you're out. So this is one of the most critical ways that you can actually change the social paradigm when dealing with your buyers. So in order to do this, I'm going to give you an example. Say you were going to like a farmer's market, all right? And you go to the farmer's market. And this is so typical. I was just at one, like two weeks ago. And you know, everybody's selling their stuff, everybody's claiming that they've got the freshest vegetables, right? Everybody's got the freshest stuff. I mean, it's all the same, right? Whatever's in this store, that store and this store all look the same to me. The problem is when you talk to your buyers, to your prospects, and you pitch about yourself, you sound like everybody else. Every other cold email, every other cold call, every other demo that they're going to get sounds exactly the same. And when you do that, you fall back into the social paradigm of buyer versus seller, which we said is one of conflict. So the way you have to find a way to stand out, to be unique, to, to be different than those who are, who are basically, you're being graded on a curve. Those other sellers trying to get the attention of that prospect or buyer, that's your competition. And I think, kd, you shared a story like it was probably months ago about how you got the best cold email ever. And then you got on the demo and it was just completely flat. Like they caught your attention with this cold copy. And then you got on the demo and it was just as vanilla, boring demo that had no personalization whatsoever. And you just, it just turned you off. You remember that story?
Absolutely. Because it was, it was like you, the rep went through all the trouble of setting and personalizing and just nailing this cold email outreach to then the demo, no discovery.
Right.
And it was, I think I even posted about this. I was like, all right, shoot your shot. This is your shot. I will give you this shot. And then they missed because they didn't do anything that aligned with to my actual goals. It was just them pitching. So no, I remember. And by the way, y' all just remember this, people remember how you sell. So when you're selling, if you switch companies but sell to the same industry, I'll remember you. Right. Always keep that in mind if you're gonna stay within the same industry.
Sure. That's really true. People definitely remember how you make them feel. So yeah, I mean that's classic. It's this classic idea that like, do not be the fruit vendor, do not be that person standing in the farmer's market amongst all these other people selling the same where yelling about how fresh your fruit is, how much better your fruit is, how much cleaner it is. They're all saying that nothing is distinct about that, nothing is special. You think your, your logo wall is any more different than your competitors logo wall? You think your unique selling propositions aren't something your competitor complain, whether truthfully or not? Maybe they're lying, maybe they can't do it, but they can claim it. And I, as an outsider, as a buyer, as a prospect, I don't know the difference. It all sounds the same to me. I mean, sure, you know it's different, but I don't. You have to think like that. You have to say yourself, I have to change this social paradigm. I have to show them I'm part of the in group, not the out group, that I get what's going on, that I understand what's happening in their world. So the way you're going to do that is you're going to try to invoke an emotion in your buyer to show them that you're distinct and unique. Okay. You're going to try to invoke an emotion in your buyer that triggers them, that limbic brain that shows them that you're distinct and unique. And by doing so, you change the social paradigm from buyer versus Seller to something more favorable to yourself. Okay, so, and by the way, it could be any emotion. I mean, I'm showing you here. It could be like sometimes it's fear, sometimes anxiety, sometimes it's happiness, sometimes it's comedy, Sometimes it can be anger. I saw a great outbound copy recently where a guy wrote in his cold call script, CFOs get pissed off when they find out they're spending up to 30% in extra processing fees for their credit card purchases. I was like, I love that copy. Pissed off one of our.
One of our highest open rate and response rate emails. Google sucks. Google sucks. And then we talk about why Google sucks if you're a private practice medical provider.
Right?
Same thing even at service titan. This is why I joke. We talk about this, y'.
All.
This is about putting into action. I told y' all to go Google your prospects and say, what do all blank hate? What's the worst part about being a blank? Because also I was going after plumbers. You know who plumbers hate? Handyman. Because handyman, so they can do the same job for half the cost. So they hate handyman. So then we would use handyman type messaging throughout our email copy and everything. So you can leverage this, y', all, if you know what can get them riled up a little bit. Oh, you gotta lean in.
You just have to. Yeah. And it's the difference between saying something standard, which is like, we save CFOs up to 30% on their processing fees. Who's that about? That's about the, the seller. That's seller oriented. What we do for you versus CFOs get pissed off when they. Over when they find out they're overspending up to 30% on processing fees. That's all about the buyer. That's buyer side. That's the difference between being this person right here yelling about how you save them on processing fees. Come to my store, I save you on fees. Everybody's claiming that. And you telling them, I know people like you get pissed off when you find out that you're overspending on fees. And it's like, you damn straight I would, I'd be really pissed off if I found out I was spending up to 30% more than I needed to on something as simple as a processing fee.
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