“Suspending Disbelief is one of those sales books where a lot of the lessons may feel familiar until you experience them through the stories.
That’s what Peter Cohan does particularly well.
Instead of telling you not to skip discovery, over-demo, make assumptions about the buyer, or keep selling after someone is ready to buy, he lets you watch those behaviors play out and see the consequences. That makes the lessons much harder to forget.
“You Know You’ve Already Closed Me” particularly resonated with me. I’m a big believer in diagnosing before prescribing. When a buyer believes you genuinely understand their situation, you’ve created more commercial trust than another twenty minutes talking about your product ever could.
But “A Prospect’s Tale” was the standout.
What struck me wasn’t simply the contrast between bad discovery and good discovery. It was seeing the seller’s entire operating system from the buyer’s side.
With one vendor, there’s plenty of activity. Meetings, demos, proposals, a POC, follow-up. From inside a sales organization, that can look like deal progression.
From the buyer’s perspective, almost every additional activity is creating more friction.
That distinction matters.
Seller activity is not buyer movement.
The contrast with the second buying experience makes the point even stronger. Good discovery doesn’t just produce a better demo. It shapes a better buying process, helps the customer make the internal decision, and carries forward into implementation and value realization.
My biggest takeaway from the book is probably this.
The seller’s operating system eventually becomes the buyer’s experience.
That’s what makes these stories useful. They aren’t simply reminders about better sales technique. They force you to see familiar seller behavior through the eyes of the person sitting on the other side of the table.
Well worth the read for anyone in sales, presales, or sales leadership.
- Scott S”
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