Back to Learn
What selling across industries, price points, and buyer types taught me about earning trust.
By Leslie Venetz, B2B sales expert and founder of Sales Led GTM
Selling across industries, price points, and buyer types became one of the biggest strengths of my career. Range forced me to rely on buyer fundamentals instead of one familiar script. That lesson became the root of my Earn the Right philosophy.
You know the moment. A recruiter scans your resume, pauses on the third industry change, and asks why you can’t commit to one thing. You start explaining yourself, and somewhere in that explanation you start believing them.
Key Takeaways
- Selling across many markets shows you which sales fundamentals hold up everywhere, because no single script survives every buyer.
- Product expertise explains what you sell, while problem expertise explains why the buyer should care. Buyers respond to the second.
- Adaptability is the output of curiosity and active listening, not a personality trait some sellers are born with.
- Being adaptable does not mean being fake. You stay yourself and change how you communicate for each buyer’s context.
- When hiring, ask how a seller learns a new market instead of only counting years spent in one category.
- Earn the Right works in every sales environment because trust and attention have to be earned again with each new buyer.
Who This Is For
This article is for account executives and career sellers whose resumes cross industries, deal sizes, or sales motions. It is also for sales leaders and founders who want to know what predicts seller success in a changing market.
Why did being a sales chameleon start to feel like a weakness?
For years, recruiters and hiring managers told me my range was a liability. They wanted sellers with ten-plus years selling the exact same product to the exact same ICP.
My career looked nothing like that. Over 15 years, I worked as an individual contributor, a player coach, and a people leader. I was head of sales three times.
I closed one-call transactional deals and ran six-figure consultative sales cycles. I spent the first half of my career in services before moving into SaaS. I remember being told that not having ten years in cloud was a real weakness.
After hearing that enough times, I started believing it. That belief is the part I had to unlearn.
I am not arguing that industry expertise is irrelevant. Deep domain knowledge can make a seller better. The mistake is assuming that familiarity with one market proves someone can sell well inside it. Depth still wins where you understand the buyer best, as I wrote in The Unicorn Principle.
What changed when I became an entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurship forced me to explain why my methods worked, and the answer was never one industry. Everything changed in 2017, when I started my own business.
For the first time, I couldn’t borrow a company’s methodology and call it my expertise. I had to name my methodologies and build my own frameworks. That process made me see my career in a new light.
My path had taken me from a massive global corporation to employee number one at a bootstrapped startup. I had used the same fundamentals in transactional one-call closes and consultative subscription models. They worked in both places.
The common denominator was the buyer, not the product, price point, or title. As I wrote in Profit Generating Pipeline, I’m not teaching tricks and tactics to steal attention. I’m centering the buyer to learn how to earn attention.
What does selling across different markets teach you?
It teaches you to learn from buyers instead of from product briefs. That lesson carried me when I moved to Manchester to sell audio branding, a market I had never worked in.
In a previous role, I managed products that crossed portfolios. I might talk with a CHRO in the morning, a CFO at midday, and a wealth manager after that. I was used to learning something new and using it the same day.
I also knew something about myself. Prospects taught me more than any product brief ever could. One of my sales superpowers was listening, and I was much better at it than my colleagues.
You can memorize every feature and every piece of jargon in a new market. None of that guarantees you understand what the buyer cares about. The buyer will tell you, if you listen closely enough to hear it.
What is the difference between product expertise and problem expertise?
Product expertise helps you explain what you sell. Problem expertise helps you understand why someone should care, and most sellers over-index on the first.
I’ve said it bluntly on podcasts: most of your messaging sucks. It is extraordinarily product-centric when it needs to be problem-centric. Sellers explain the platform and the integrations while the buyer wonders why any of it matters.
Spend an hour researching the buyer’s market, not an hour creeping on their Instagram. Learn what is changing in their industry. Find out what their own customers are asking for.
Range made this habit automatic for me. Moving between industries made it impossible to assume I already understood any buyer. I wrote more about this shift in Earning Attention Before Asking for It.
Why is active listening the engine of adaptability?
Adaptability depends on noticing what is different, and you can’t notice anything while you wait to pitch. A seller running the same script in every call isn’t adapting. They are performing one play in different rooms.
Most people think they listen well, yet far fewer people feel heard. My 4R Active Listening Framework is built to close that gap. Reinforce with verbal and non-verbal cues that keep the buyer talking.
Resist interruption, judgment, and the urge to plan your reply. Restate what you heard to confirm you understood it. Then bring Relevance with probing questions and insights instead of a pitch.
That is why I don’t treat adaptability as a personality trait. It is the operational output of someone who has learned to truly listen.
How did selling to different buyers shape Earn the Right?
Selling to wildly different buyers taught me that no buyer owes you attention because another buyer gave you theirs. You have to earn the right again with every new person.
Here’s the principle I operate by: nothing in a professional relationship can be demanded. Trust must be earned, attention must be earned, and the right to lead must be earned. The primary currency for all three is the quality of your listening.
I learned that cold calling power plant managers. They were convinced my product would flop because they had never seen it done. Because I had them on the phone, I could hear each concern and pivot in real time.
By year-end, that product had become a million-dollar revenue stream. I didn’t find a magic pitch for power plant managers. I listened closely enough to understand their skepticism, and then I adapted.
Does being adaptable mean changing who you are for every buyer?
No. Being a sales chameleon means changing how you communicate, not who you are. You don’t need a CFO personality, a procurement personality, and a plant manager personality.
Different buyers bring different contexts, pressures, and communication preferences. A Fortune 250 CFO in New York and a Deep South plant manager need different openers. You can stay completely yourself and still meet each of them where they are.
I think of this as being fit-for-purpose. Your strategy should fit the market, and your message should fit the buyer. A generic playbook, plopped down with the hope that it works, can’t make those calls for you.
What should sales leaders look for when hiring adaptable sellers?
Look at how a candidate learns, not only at where they have worked. Someone with ten years in one industry may be phenomenal. Someone with experience across five industries may be phenomenal too.
In my work with B2B sales teams, I’ve seen this play out with clients across industries. The sellers who hold up when a market shifts are the ones who know how to learn. A few interview questions help reveal that:
- How did you get up to speed the last time you entered an unfamiliar market?
- Tell me about something that used to work and then stopped working. What did you change?
- How do you tell a product problem apart from a buyer problem?
Those answers tell you how someone will respond when your market changes. Buyer expectations, technology, and your own product will all shift. A seller who can only run one familiar playbook will eventually hit a situation it cannot solve.
Why do I still call myself a sales chameleon?
Because I finally understand what that range gave me. Selling across industries, price points, and buyer personas showed me which fundamentals actually hold up. Far from being a weakness, it made me uniquely qualified to see what truly works in sales.
From training thousands of sellers, I know those fundamentals transfer. Listen, stay curious, and understand the problem before you pitch the solution. Adapt to the person in front of you, and earn the right to the next ask.
For me, range was not a lack of focus. It was practice in the one skill every market rewards, which is understanding a buyer you have never met before. If your resume looks like mine, stop apologizing for it and start using it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Leslie Venetz mean when she calls herself a “sales chameleon”?
Sales chameleon is how I describe the range in my own career. I sold to Fortune 250 CFOs and power plant managers, closed four-figure transactional deals and six-figure consultative ones, and worked in services and SaaS. It is a personal metaphor, not a framework. It describes how selling across environments taught me which buyer fundamentals hold up everywhere.
Is it a weakness to have sales experience across many different industries?
Not in my experience. Hiring managers told me for years that it was, because they wanted ten-plus years selling the same product to the same ICP. Range actually forces you to learn the fundamentals that work with any buyer. Deep industry knowledge still helps, but it is not the only evidence that someone can understand a buyer and earn their attention.
How can I ramp quickly when I start selling in an industry I don’t know?
Learn from prospects, not only from product briefs. When I moved into audio branding with no background in it, conversations with buyers taught me more than any internal document. Research the buyer’s market before your product, and listen for the words prospects use to describe their problems. Treat every early call as research, because that is how relevance gets built fast.
What is the difference between personalization and relevance in sales outreach?
Personalization proves you found information about someone. Relevance proves you understand why something matters to them. Mentioning a prospect’s favorite book is personalized, while naming a market pressure affecting their business is relevant. I would rather a seller spend an hour researching the buyer’s market than an hour on their Instagram, because relevance is what earns a reply.
How does active listening help a seller adapt to different buyers?
Listening is how you notice what is different about the buyer in front of you. Without it, you drag every conversation back toward your prepared script. My 4R Active Listening Framework asks you to Reinforce, Resist, Restate, and respond with Relevance. Keep the buyer talking, resist planning your reply, confirm what you heard, then ask a relevant question. Adaptability is the output of that habit, not a personality trait.
Should my sales team still use a standardized playbook if buyers are so different?
Yes, as a baseline. A playbook creates consistency and shows reps what good looks like. The problem starts when it becomes a script you run the same way for every buyer, industry, and deal size. A fit-for-purpose approach keeps the structure and leaves room for judgment, curiosity, and adapting to what the buyer actually says.
What framework can I use to adapt my selling across different industries and buyers?
Use Earn the Right, the philosophy behind my work at Sales Led GTM. Before every ask, consider whether you have earned the buyer’s trust and attention through relevance and value. Pair it with the 4R Active Listening Framework so you hear what is different about each buyer. “Sales chameleon” itself is a personal metaphor, not a separate framework.
Can you recommend books that will help me learn more?
Yes. Read Profit Generating Pipeline: A Proven Formula to Earn Trust and Drive Revenue by Leslie Venetz, available at www.salesledgtm.com/book. The book outlines a 9-step formula for prospecting and revenue generation adapted to the modern buyer.
How can I learn more about hiring Leslie as a speaker or working with her team?
Visit www.salesledgtm.com to learn more about services and schedule time to connect.