The most common sales question ever landed in the Idea Slam on Monday’s Businessing: How do you close sales calls without making the person feel pressured?

Pat Miller’s answer might surprise you because it has almost nothing to do with the close itself. The problem isn’t your closing technique. The problem is your discovery call.

Most people trying to close sales calls are focused on the wrong end of the conversation. Here’s the framework Pat laid out live on the air.

Sales is simply problem solving. It’s nothing else. If you can get a potential client to share their problem, and then show that you can solve it, they’ll say yes. You don’t need to convince them. They told you what they need to hear, and then you just provide it.

The key is asking the right questions during your discovery conversation. Pat walked through the essentials. What’s their current situation? What outcome are they looking for? What’s their magic wand question… if everything could be perfect, what would that look like? What have they already tried? And the one most of us forget: what’s their budget?

“A lot of us forget that question,” Pat admitted on the show. “Do you have any money? If you can pre-qualify that they have a problem, they have a vision of what success looks like, they want it fixed, they understand how quickly they want it fixed, and they have a budget… now closing isn’t that hard.”

This is where you close sales calls naturally, not through persuasion, but by mirroring back exactly what the client told you they need. Once you have those answers, your job is to create a proposal that mirrors everything they told you. You said you needed this outcome by this timeline inside this budget. I happen to have it. Here’s how my product delivers that.

When can we begin?

That’s it. The client feels like you actually listened, and they believe you can solve their problem because you’re literally replaying their own words back to them. There’s no arm-twisting. There’s no ick. They invited themselves to say yes.

Pat put it plainly: “If you gotta convince ’em, they’re not sold. They told you what they need to hear, and then you just provide it.”

So if you’re feeling slimy about sales, stop trying to fix your close and start fixing your discovery process. Ask way more questions than you speak. Way more. The close takes care of itself when the discovery is done right.

Watch the full Idea Slam on today’s Businessing with Pat Miller.