Erin talks about the mistake even strong salespeople make, and the three gates that filter bad-fit clients before the call.
You get an inbound call from a promising prospect. An hour later, you’ve shared your approach and your best stories, and it turns out they don’t have the budget or the authority to buy. Sound familiar?
In this episode, Erin names a mistake that catches even strong sellers: trying to close before you’ve qualified. She opens with two stories, including one of her own, where mapping a new client onto a past win stretched the negotiation longer than it needed to be.
[00:03:28] “Both of these stories are really illustrations of the same mistake, which is selling before qualifying. And it happens to everyone, even when you think you’re good at sales.”
Her fix is a set of three gates, like a bouncer deciding who gets in. Marketing is the first gate, doing the filtering before anyone reaches you. The second is a pre-call hypothesis built from what you already know about the prospect. The third is a mindset shift once you’re on the call, where curiosity replaces trying to prove you’re right. She closes with four practical moves, including one from her friend Allison Davis about slowing the whole process down.
[00:21:23] “Before your next call with a prospect, always be thinking about going one layer deeper than will they pay me?”

Qualify Before You Sell: The Three Gates That Save You Time

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