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Welcome back to Part 2 of The Buyer's Seat series, where I’m breaking down the counterintuitive influence traps I’m spotting as a buyer. Because as we've talked about before: if you are in leadership, you are selling internally all day long.

During my recent conversations with potential partners, I had a humbling realization: I think my business is so special.

So, when I spend time explaining a highly nuanced challenge, and the vendor replies with:

"I’ve worked with coaching businesses before, so I kind of know what you’re going for."

...I instantly go, uh oh.

The intent behind this is obviously good. They want to reassure me they have the reps and the experience.

But what I actually hear is that they’ve already sized me up, made a bunch of assumptions, and their creativity is now capped by whatever they did for the last coaching business.

Yes, buyers—and your teammates—want to know you have solved similar problems before. But nobody wants to feel like a generic data point.

In our rush to prove our competence, we skip right over the other person's context.

Psychologists call this Self-Verification Theory.¹ Humans have a profound, hardwired drive to be seen by others exactly as they see themselves, which is usually as unique and nuanced. When you categorize someone too quickly, they stop listening because they feel run through an algorithm instead of listened to.

Your value here as a human leader is in how you arrive at an answer when a teammates comes to you for support.

This brings us to a behavioral science concept called Procedural Justice.² Research shows that people are significantly more likely to accept an outcome, trust a leader, or buy into a strategy if they believe the process used to get there was fair and deeply considered their specific input.

It is so tempting when a peer or direct report brings us a problem, because we are stressed or short on time, to immediately spit out the solution. We think we are being efficient, but they feel dismissed.

To bridge the gap between having the experience to help and seeing someone’s unique reality, try these two shifts this week:

1. Delay The Diagnosis

Use your pattern recognition to validate them, then immediately hand the microphone back. Move from ending the conversation with an answer to opening it with a constraint.

The Script: "I’ve seen a similar pattern to this when I worked with the product team last year. But your timeline constraints on this launch are entirely different. Walk me through how you’re thinking about the timing."

2. Poke Holes In The Playbook

When you do need to introduce a standard process, invite them to poke holes in it. This fulfills the need for Procedural Justice. It shows you value their specific vantage point. Move from prescribing the process to pressure-testing it together.

The Script: "Here is the standard playbook we usually run for X. You are closer to the client than I am. Where do you think their reality breaks this model?"

Slow down. Show your work. Show that while you have the expertise to solve the problem, you have the presence to see the person.

Next week, in our third and final (for now) installment of The Buyer's Seat series, we are looking at a flaw in most 1:1s and discovery calls: why asking an endless laundry list of questions makes you look like an interrogator, and the rhythm you could be using instead.

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