There is a sales skill that you probably aren’t very good at. And I’ve got data to back this up.
The lack of this skill is a problem for you because in sales no cash exchanges hands until a person says “yes”.
And people are all a little crazy…
We all think that we're rational but we're not.
And so, even when the right offer, at the right price is put in front of prospects, they still pass on it. Which is dumb but it’s the world that we live in.
So what sales skill is required to help buyers make the right purchasing decisions? Well, that’s the skill of influence and it might be the most important and underrated sales skill in 2025.
If you listen in for the next 10 minutes, I’m going to explain how I know you probably lack the skill of influence and how it’s the one skill that is becoming more and more important to sellers who want to find and close enough deals, to make enough cash to retire early.
Now, my name is Will and I’m the founder of Salesman.com. At Salesman.com we have an assessment that nearly 40,000 sellers have completed.
The SalesCode assessment asks 120 questions and then provides insights on the traits of high performance that the user has and is lacking:

Last week I pulled all the SalesCode data, formatted it in a new way that I haven't experimented with before and something became clear.
The trait of “influence” was much lower than I expected in the sellers who have completed the assessment.
It was so low in fact that I compared the data between 2025 and the first version of the assessment that we launched back in 2019 and the results were shocking.
87% of sellers who regularly exceeded sales quota scored high for influence back in 2019.
Only 35% of sellers who regularly exceeded sales quota scored high for influence in 2025.
So, has the social skill of ethically influencing buyers become less important over the past 6 years?
I don't think so.
Heck, in the Trust Crisis that we're currently selling into where everyone is more sceptical than ever, the ability to influence prospects and help them see the world from our perspective is more powerful than ever.
So, what is going on here?
I think from hiding behind email, attempting (and failing) to get deals done over social media and working from home has led a whole generation of sellers to deskill their ability to influence others.
That is the current state of affairs. Buyers are more sceptical of sellers than ever before and sellers are worse then ever at influencing buyers.
What does this mean for you?
It means that if you can learn the skill of influence then you have a massive competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Remember, influence is the ability to convince someone to believe something new or different to what they currently believe.
If your prospects believed that:

* Your product was the right product for them
* It was going to solve all their issues
* The price was less than the value delivered

Then you wouldn't have a job. You could be instantly replaced by an online order form.
But your job exists…
So inherently there is a need for you to influence your buyers to change their views and adopt your perspective to get deals over the line.
So lets now take a look at 3 ways that you can dramatically increase your ability to influence your prospects today.
Commitment
Once a prospect agrees that in theory our product can help them, they’re much more likely to continue to agree this as we increase the scope of our point of view over time.
Here’s why.
Humans don’t like to change our minds. Back in our tribal days, if we made a decision that didn’t harm us (or better yet, benefited us), we weren’t going to question making that decision the next time around.