July 25, 2026 | Read online
I spent an hour of my Saturday inside a Good Feet Store with my wife and daughter, and I walked out laughing so hard I almost cried.
Let me set this up. I didn't know much about the place going in, and we did zero research. I figured it was insoles. I have high arches, and my go-to Adidas shell toes have the arch support of a piece of cardboard. My wife's feet and back had been bothering her, and my daughter has high arches too. So one day we decided to walk in.
The rep came out and asked what was going on with our feet. I told him I had some pain here and there, nothing major, no chronic issues, but I'd love to feel a little more comfortable in my shoes. My wife said basically the same thing. My daughter didn't really have an answer for him at all.
Then he told us the process takes over an hour. I told him we only had an hour. He said he could make it work.
An hour-long pitch for insoles should have been my first red flag, but I was interested in the product (and the sales process), so I let him go through it.
He brought out the first type of insole, then the second, then the third. Then he started bringing out shoes, even though we told him up front we were not in the market for sneakers. Around minute 45, a second guy came out. The "specialist." Clearly the senior rep, brought in to play the experienced, empathetic closer while the junior guy watched.
As we hit the hour mark, I finally asked the question nobody had touched yet - "So when are we getting to the price?"
Out came the pamphlets and the program overview. It was thousands of dollars, and the whole pitch was built around wearing their system for the rest of your life.
I literally burst out laughing in the store. We walked out without even giving him the courtesy of "we'll call you back."
I looked it up afterward. Good Feet's own website prices their arch supports at $399 to $599 a pair, and their model is a three-pair, 3-step system. Do the math, and that's roughly $1,200 to $1,800 per person before tax and add-ons. For the three of us, that pitch was somewhere between $3,600 and $5,400. For insoles.
Here's what I keep coming back to. That rep didn't lose the sale at the price reveal. He lost it in the first two minutes, when all three of us told him our feet were basically fine and he kept selling anyway.
That's happy ears. He heard "some pain here and there" and translated it into "qualified buyer for a lifetime foot program." He heard what he wanted to hear, ignored every signal that we weren't a fit, and burned an hour of his time and ours to find out what he could have learned up front.
And look, on paper we were the perfect profile. A family walks in, everyone has some level of foot complaint, dad's wearing shell toes with zero support. Demographics said we were a fit. Demographics get you into the conversation. They don't make somebody a deal.
I've said this for years: the worst thing in sales isn't losing a deal. It's taking a long time to lose a deal.
Think about what he could have said in minute two: "If your feet aren't causing you real problems, you should know this is a full program, and it costs a few thousand dollars per person. Do you still want to go through the fitting?"
We would have been out of there in ten minutes. He would have had 50 minutes back to spend with somebody dealing with plantar fasciitis and real pain who might actually say yes. Instead, he wasted an hour, got laughed at, and got ghosted.
Sales reps do this every single day. Somebody fits the demographic profile, shows a little bit of need, takes a meeting, and the rep starts sprinting toward the close. Every yellow flag gets explained away. The budget conversation gets pushed to later because "we're building value first," and nobody asks whether this is actually a priority because the rep is afraid of the answer.
Here's the problem with that approach. The questions that kill your deal are getting asked no matter what. The buyer is going to find out your price. They're going to figure out whether the pain is worth solving. The only thing you control is WHEN that happens. Week one, when it costs you almost nothing, or week twelve, after you've built the business case, run three demos, and forecasted it to your manager.
That's why I believe disqualifying is every bit as important as qualifying. Once somebody fits the profile and shows some need, my next move is to surface the reasons the deal might die. I'd rather hear why somebody shouldn't do business with me early than discover it after I've dumped weeks into the pursuit.
A few ways to do that. Ask how much the problem is actually costing them, and if the honest answer is "nothing major," believe them. Ask what happens if they do nothing, because "nothing bad" is your cue to walk. And when you know your price is going to be a shock, float a range early and watch the reaction.
None of this is advanced. It's sales fundamentals, and it's exactly the discipline most reps abandon the second their pipeline looks thin. A skinny pipeline full of real deals beats a fat pipeline full of Good Feet walk-ins every single quarter. This is a big part of what I drill with teams in Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close, because qualification is a muscle, and most teams stopped working it.
Now I want to hear yours. Reply to this email and tell me about the deal you chased way too long, the one you knew deep down was dead in week two. I read every reply.
Somewhere out there is a Good Feet rep who still has us marked as "thinking about it" in his pipeline.
Don't be that guy.
#MakeItHappen
| How did I do with this edition? |
|
|
|
|