---
title: The Seller's Paradox
description: When you're selling (or building a go-to-market strategy) you must - must - put thoughts about yourself or your interests aside.
---

[Making Sales Growth Predictable, Sustainable & Scalable ](https://www.liftenablement.com/blog)

# [The Seller's Paradox](https://www.liftenablement.com/blog/the-sellers-paradox)

 Written by [Doug Davidoff](https://www.liftenablement.com/blog/author/doug-davidoff) | Jan 15, 2013 9:00:00 AM

 

When I conduct sales training for executives and sales teams, I typically finish with the valuable thought:

"**[Stop Selling!](https://blog.imaginellc.com/dont-be-a-pigeon-why-selling-is-dead) If you feel like you're selling, you're doing something wrong**."

I call it *The Seller's Paradox.  *

When you're selling (or building a go-to-market strategy) you must - must - put thoughts about yourself or your interests aside.  This is the entire point of what Demand Creation Selling is all about.  Traditional selling is built on a very weak foundation.  Your active sales time allocation looks something like this:

If I had $10 for every time a salesperson or executive I was either coaching or managing said to me that they wish they knew something that came up in the last phase of the process earlier, I wouldn't need an income for several years.

However, if you go against the grain and build a solid foundation, one where you spend  the first half (or more) of your time digging deep and diagnosing, you'll accelerate your sales cycle, and bypass the shop cycle 80% of the time.

Diagnosing means uncovering issues and enabling your prospect/customer to understand their situation and needs, as well as you.  When taking this approach, your prospect/customer stops seeing you as a salesperson, and instead views you as a critical resource *to enable them to achieve their critical objective.*

When you occupy this spot in their mind, objections, hassles and delays disappear.

[View full post](https://www.liftenablement.com/blog/the-sellers-paradox)

```json
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Doug Davidoff"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2019-08-01T20:09:20.687Z",
  "datePublished" : "2013-01-15T09:00:00Z",
  "headline" : "The Seller's Paradox",
  "image" : {
    "@type" : "ImageObject",
    "height" : 134,
    "url" : "http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/100473/file-363416045-jpg/blog-files/growth-steps-7-300x134.jpg",
    "width" : 300
  },
  "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://www.liftenablement.com/blog/the-sellers-paradox",
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "height" : 60,
      "url" : "/hs/hsstatic/content_shared_assets/static-1.4092/img/default-amp-logo.png",
      "width" : 60
    },
    "name" : "The Demand Creator Blog"
  }
}
```