Know Your Stuff
Why Authenticity Beats the Script Every Time.
Let’s start with something uncomfortable: buyers know when you’re reading from a script. And the moment they figure it out, they stop listening.
I’ve trained hundreds of salespeople. I can’t count the times I’ve watched someone feverishly take notes during a session and jotting down my phrasing, my transitions, my analogies, then repeating those same lines to a customer later. Word for word. And I’ll be honest: it makes me cringe.
Because even when the content is right, the delivery isn’t. It doesn’t sound like them. It sounds like someone trying to sound like someone else.
The Scripted Seller Problem
Across industries, but especially in adtech, sales teams have become fluent in someone else’s words. They memorize feature lists, value props, objection-handling playbooks that are all written by people they’ve probably never met.
Buyers have well-developed BS meters. They can feel the moment when someone stops understanding and starts reciting.
It’s the pause before the answer.
It’s the robotic phrasing that doesn’t match the question.
It’s the way confidence dips when the conversation drifts even an inch off script.
Rehearsed sellers sound like actors. Real ones sound like advisors.
The Adtech Reality Check
Adtech might be the most vivid example of this gap.
You’ve got non-technical salespeople selling highly technical platforms to non-technical advertising buyers. Yet the only way to truly differentiate between platforms is technical.
That creates a problem. To solve it, many brands and agencies have introduced a new role — the “technical gatekeeper.” If you’re in adtech, you know this person. They’ve seen every DSP, every SSP, every ID graph, every attribution model. They can’t sign the contract, but they can absolutely kill the deal. They live to probe. To test. To ask “how” until the rep breaks. And when the seller doesn’t authentically understand what they’re selling and when they can’t answer the “how” without reading from a brochure then the meeting turns into a slow collapse.
The gatekeeper smells blood. The rep loses credibility. The deal dies.
The Myth of “Keep It Simple”
People love to say, “Keep it simple. Dumb it down so they’ll buy.”
I reject that.
There’s a difference between clarity and condescension.
Simplicity without substance insults intelligent buyers.
Your job isn’t to water down the truth — it’s to translate complexity into confidence.
The TV Story
Here’s a simpler example.
A few years ago, I walked into a big-box electronics store to buy a new TV. I was immediately overwhelmed by the options: 4K, OLED, LED, QLED, refresh rates, quantum dots — enough jargon to make your head spin.
There was no chance I could make sense of it all.
But then I met the salesperson.
He didn’t dumb anything down. He explained the differences between models and technologies in his own words, clearly, confidently, without rushing. It was obvious he understood exactly what he was talking about.
Did I walk away an expert on liquid-crystal panels? Absolutely not. But I walked away certain that he was. And that was enough for me to trust him and buy.
What Authentic Understanding Looks Like
If you really know your product, you can talk to anyone.
You can:
• Explain it to a kindergartener.
• Debate it with an engineer.
• Defend it to a skeptic.
That’s mastery. It’s not about sounding smart. It’s about sounding real. It’s about being able to improvise without losing accuracy. When you truly understand your product, you don’t need a script. You just need a conversation.
Why It Matters Now
In modern B2B sales, especially with AI automating so much of the process, authenticity has become the last real differentiator. Scripts can be replicated. Confidence can be coached. But understanding, genuine hard- earned comprehension, can’t be faked or automated.
Buyers don’t expect you to make them experts. They expect you to be one. When you are, they’ll trust you even if they don’t fully understand what you’re saying. Because they’ll feel the difference between someone who gets it and someone who’s pretending to.
The Takeaway
The next time you prep for a sales call, stop memorizing. Start mastering.
If you can’t confidently explain your product to a child, debate it with a PhD, and translate it for a customer then you don’t know it well enough to sell it. People buy from people who understand what they’re talking about. And in a world where everyone’s faking confidence, knowing your stuff is the ultimate competitive edge.