Retail Out Of It: Leadership, Sales, And The Mindset Beyond The Scoreboard

We're all selling something. Our ideas. Our opinions. Our experiences. Our solutions. Our stories. Sometimes, simply the belief that we're right. We do it at work. We do it at home. We do it with customers, employees, coworkers, friends, spouses, and children. We enter conversations thinking about what we want the other person to understand, believe, do, or give us. But what if we stopped trying to sell each other? What might we discover? Most of us spend more time trying to be understood than trying to understand. We listen while preparing our response. We hear someone's words and fill in the blanks with our own experiences, expectations, assumptions, and beliefs. We think we know what they meant. We think we know what they want. We think we know why they said no, why they're frustrated, why they disagree, or why they see things differently. And then we respond—not necessarily to what's happening, but to what we think is happening. We're so busy trying to make our point, we sometimes miss the person we're making it to. The person in front of us. What they think. What they feel. What they want. What they've experienced. What they actually meant. Retail Out Of It is about what can happen when we stop approaching people solely through the outcome we're trying to get from them—and start getting genuinely curious about who they are. Listen to understand instead of defend. Ask instead of assume. Be curious instead of certain. Understand before trying to influence. These aren't simply sales principles. They're human principles—and they matter anywhere two people are trying to understand one another. In business. In leadership. In sales. In friendships and relationships. In parenting, coaching, mentoring, and teaching. Understanding doesn't require agreement. But it does require us to become curious enough to consider that what we think we know about another person might not be what they actually think at all. And when we do that, we create the possibility for something better: better conversations, deeper relationships, greater empathy, stronger trust, more meaningful influence—and perhaps a little more understanding between us. What if we stopped trying to sell each other—and started trying to understand each other? Take the retail out of it.