Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

90% of People Are Selling Wrong

24 Aug 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:47

In this short clip from Lenny Rachitsky’s YouTube video, a guest (Speaker A) argues that the conventional five‑step sales process (intro, demo, proposal, contracting, close) is overly rigid and does not reflect the reality of one‑on‑one selling. He explains that while a repeatable framework can cover about 80 % of the interaction, the remaining 20 % hinges on the human “art” of making the prospect feel heard, entertained, and emotionally engaged. When asked how many salespeople misuse the formula, he claims roughly 90 % treat sales as a fixed sequence and therefore sell incorrectly.

Chapters

The most successful salespeople are not trained salespeople. Everyone knows the traditional 5 steps: intro, demo, proposal, contracting, and then like close won or close loss, right? That's not the stages you take a client through. Like, those are just the broad buckets. Sales is one-on-one. You're dealing with a variable, which is another individual, and if you ran the same flow every single time, it's gonna probably not hit. 1 out of every 4 times, cuz everyone's different. Even as we go through all these 15 steps, while it's 80% of it, the other 20% is obviously the art of like how you make someone feel. Do they feel heard? Did you make it fun? Did you tell a good story?
What percentage do you think are just doing it wrong in that way and treating it like this 5-step process?
90%. Wow.