CUSTOMERS & BUSINESS
Sales
14 practices · 7 case practices · 1 free
Make a case for your offer while giving the customer room to decide.
Finish every practice on this route to earn the “Human skills for sales” completion certificate. It records that you completed the practices; it is not a professional credential.
The conversations on this route
Each step names the skill it rehearses and why it matters in this kind of work.
A first message to a café owner who dislikes sales pitches
Write a relevant first message
Make your relevance clear and your request easy to answer.
Ask Lea for a 10-minute research interview. Say why you’re writing, what you want to learn, and that you have nothing to sell.
7 minFoundationsSoulful
A customer’s team left your task board for a spreadsheet
Listen for the real situation
Ask about what someone does today before pitching a change.
You have 15 minutes with Sam. Use your notes to choose questions about what happened, and leave out the ones your notes answer or that pitch your fixes.
12 minFoundationsCase practiceSoulful
Selling booking software to an instructor swamped by messages
Explain the value that matters
Connect a benefit to a customer’s actual need.
Noor described her evenings in an interview. Connect your scheduling software to that part of her day without claiming hours saved.
8 minFoundationsFree starter
A customer asks if your notebook paper suits fountain pens
Be honest about fit
Give limitations the same clarity as benefits.
Check what the shop’s ink tests show for Rae’s own pen, then answer honestly, including the drawback, and offer a sample page to try before buying.
12 minStretchCase practiceSoulful
A nonprofit can’t afford your full workshop
Negotiate with curiosity
Understand what matters behind a price or a condition.
Read your notes from the call, build a shorter session within their budget around what the volunteers need most, and offer it honestly.
15 minDeep practiceCase practiceSoulful
No reply ten days after sending your workshop proposal
Respect the next step
Use the follow-up to add a useful detail and make your request clear, then respect the customer’s decision if they decline.
Dev said they’d take a look. Pass on the venue’s offer of free equipment, then decide when you’ll stop following up.
6 minFoundationsSoulful
A prospect asks why they should pay when free chatbots exist
Explain before you pitch
Answer an objection by teaching, then restate the offer as a choice.
Explain what a free tool can and can’t do with Rosli’s prices and stock, then restate your $1,500 pilot as an offer he can decline.
10 minStretchSoulful
A prospect asks you to lower your quote
Discount for something real
Tie any reduction to a real trade and say what it is.
Keep the full price and offer a real trade: a smaller version built from what the prospect needs, or 10% off for paying in full before you start.
15 minDeep practiceCase practiceSoulful
Pitching the part of your project an investor panel can fund
Pitch to the people in the room
Read who is deciding and ask for the stage they can fund.
Pick a field you know, read who is on the panel and what each usually invests, then ask for the stage they can fund and say what comes next.
20 minDeep practiceCase practiceSoulful
Eight leads came in, and you have time for three calls
Qualify leads
Spend the week on leads with the need, budget, authority and timing to buy.
Sort this week’s leads by need, budget, who decides and timing, then reply to one with the next step that fits, easy to decline.
13 minStretchCase practiceSoulful
Your cofounder wants another month of building before any demo
Sell before it feels finished
Put the working product in front of buyers every day instead of waiting for polish.
Respect the work, say what waiting costs you, and propose a daily routine of showing the product to customers alongside the building, with a date to review.
12 minStretchSoulful
A seller hoped for more than your offer on a used laptop
Explain a lower offer
Tie each finding to what it does to the price, count only what you have checked, and leave the choice with the seller.
Sort what you found into what lowers the price, what doesn’t and what you can’t count yet, then explain your offer so the seller can decide.
14 minStretchCase practiceSoulful
A seller says another shop offered more for the same laptop
Answer a better offer
Say what you really offer and what your price depends on, without running down a competitor or pressing for a yes.
Answer with what your shop really offers, without running down the other shop or pressing for a yes, and let the seller choose.
12 minStretchSoulful
Writing an honest listing for a cheap refurbished laptop
Describe used goods honestly
Name the remaining risk plainly and say what happens if something goes wrong early.
Say what you checked and fixed, name the remaining risk plainly without hiding or exaggerating it, and say what happens if something goes wrong early.
13 minDeep practiceSoulful
Related reading
Apologize to a coworker when you still disagreeYou snapped at a colleague, but your worry about the work is still real. How to own the snap, ask what repair they want, and return to the decision.How to ask a friend for an introduction, or a mentor for helpAsk for an introduction so that nobody is put on the spot: check with the middle person first, write a note they can forward, and let both sides say no.Follow up without making someone owe you a replyA sales follow-up example that adds something useful without inventing urgency, plus how to decide when to stop contacting someone.How to tell a customer your product is not the right fitWhen a buyer’s need goes beyond what your product does, say so early, name what it does well, and point to a way to check before they pay.The research behind these practices
Each practice cites the studies that informed its design and says where they may not apply. These are the sources cited most across the 14 practices on this page; they inform the practices and are not proof that the practices work.
- Simulation-based learning in higher education: a meta-analysis (Meta-analysis · 145 studies, 2020). Cited by 7 practices here.
Chernikova and colleagues pooled 145 studies of simulation-based learning in higher education and found a large overall effect on complex skills, with scaffolding a positive moderator. Learners with little prior knowledge gained more from worked examples and those with more gained more from reflection. Most studies came from medical and teacher education, so applying the results to adult people skills or to this product is an inference.
- The Power of Feedback Revisited (Meta-analysis · educational feedback, 2020). Cited by 3 practices here.
This synthesis examines educational feedback across studies and outcomes. Feedback content and context matter; generic praise and feedback on specific work should not be treated as equivalent.
- An examination of the nature of trust in buyer-seller relationships (Journal of Marketing · survey of purchasing managers, 1997). Cited by 2 practices here.
Doney and Cannon surveyed more than 200 purchasing managers. Trust in the supplier firm and in its salesperson shaped expected future dealings, although after controlling for prior experience and supplier performance neither affected the current supplier choice. It concerns industrial buyers, not small-business owners, and it does not test teaching before selling.
- An integrative model of organizational trust (Academy of Management Review · conceptual model, 1995). Cited by 2 practices here.
Mayer, Davis and Schoorman define trust as willingness to be vulnerable and propose that perceived trustworthiness rests on ability, benevolence and integrity. It is a conceptual model rather than an experiment, and it does not say that any sequence of messages creates trust.
- First offers as anchors: the role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus (Experiments · negotiation, 2001). Cited by 2 practices here.
Galinsky and Mussweiler ran three experiments, in face-to-face and email negotiations, in which the party that made the first offer reached the better result. The advantage faded when the negotiator receiving the offer focused on information that cut against it, such as alternatives to the deal, the other side’s reservation price or their own target. It shows why the first figure matters; it does not test freelance quotes or say how any price should be set.
- IMBUE: interpersonal practice and just-in-time feedback (Randomized study · interpersonal effectiveness, 2024). Cited by 2 practices here.
A study of 86 participants examined simulated interpersonal practice. Transfer differed across skill and emotional outcomes, supporting varied rehearsal while cautioning against broad transformation claims.
23 more sources are listed on the research page.
Limits
Role descriptions draw on public occupational sources. Practicing these conversations is not a qualification, and a Leetsoul completion certificate is not a professional credential or a hiring signal.
Leetsoul has not shown that these practices improve skill in real life, and the original scenarios have not been independently tested. The sources inform the design of the exercises.
Role descriptions
Try one in your own words
Write your response to a fictional conversation, read the guidance, then decide what you would change. Three starter practices are free; Soulful opens the full library.
Written by Leetsoul. Updated . Scenarios are fictional.