# 7 Deal-Making Lessons From Leaders Who Know How to Win > Leaders share tactics to get 'yes' on deals without overselling. - Title: 7 Deal-Making Lessons From Leaders Who Know How to Win · Maxim - Summary: Leaders share tactics to get 'yes' on deals without overselling. Industry leaders provide seven strategies for securing deals by building trust, speaking… - Keywords: deal-making, business skills, dealmakers, expert panel, leadership advice, maxim sphere, Maxim - Source: Maxim — https://maxim.com/maxim-sphere/getting-to-yes-7-deal-making-lessons-from-leaders-who-know-how-to-win - Published: 2026-10-27T09:00:00+00:00 - Read time: 1 min - Topics: deal-making, business skills, dealmakers, expert panel, leadership advice, maxim sphere ## Know Your Stuff The best dealmakers know their product or service inside and out and genuinely believe in its value. > The best dealmakers know their product or service inside and out and genuinely believe in its value. This level of knowledge and authenticity fosters an immediate sense of trust, one rooted in respect for the salesperson’s expertise, passion and conviction. Once you’ve established trust, communicating value to a potential investor can become a simple conversation, instead of requiring a highly polished and persuasive speech. ## Speak Their Language Raise capital by pitching investors who understand your audience better than your product. > They speak in terms that are relatable to their audience. When raising capital for InList, we had to pitch investors who understood the demographic (high-net-worth individuals) better than they understood the actual product itself (reservations for clubs and high-end restaurants). ## Lead With Trust Emotional trust helps clients move past details to reach a 'yes' faster. > Emotional trust goes a long way in business. When an entrepreneur or salesperson approaches a business conversation with boilerplate ‘ladder’ strategies and template tactics often taught religiously in sales lectures, their audience can usually sense what feels like a coordinated plan of attack rather than the authentic curiosity, compassion and ambition required to satisfy their needs. When dealmakers prioritize earning trust in business discussions, they create space for the listener to feel comfortable. This allows their audience to move past delicate details and arrive at a 'yes' more quickly, because they are less concerned with the minutiae. Rather, they’re more concerned with how much their gut trusts the individual feeding them with the facts. Sometimes, the most faithful strategy a great dealmaker brings to the table for a faster 'yes' isn’t their product, track record or polished proposal, but their word. ## Listen More Than You Talk Active listening builds relationships that discover the true 'why' behind decisions. > No frills, no secret method unable to be leveraged by certain demographics, just active listening. Understanding your client above all fosters relationships that motivate, collaborate and help discover the true 'why.' ## Remove Any Friction Target the right audience to reduce friction and boost conversion rates for $1,500-plus purchases. > In the world of retail, I relate this to our ‘time to convert’ metrics. Targeting the right audience naturally drives higher conversion rates. Once you know you are marketing to the right people, you can zero in on the friction points delaying your conversion funnel. To get a shopper to make a $1,500-plus purchase immediately after discovering your brand, you have to earn that trust instantly. We build this trust by investing heavily in brand building, customer service and overall experience. We strategically integrate review requests into our customer workflows and produce consistent content across our blog and social channels to stay relevant and ensure algorithms place us right in front of our followers. We also look at our most popular landing pages, where users drop off and which product features or policies they review before purchasing. We’re continuously running A/B tests to find the fastest, most effective ways to surface the right information during the purchase journey. ## Be Clear About What You Can Offer Be authentic and straightforward about what you can offer to build business relationships. > Be authentic, real and straightforward about what you can offer to your customers and clients. That kind of ‘straight talk’ is seldom seen and the highly prized currency of business relationships and connections. ## Think Beyond The First 'Yes' The best dealmakers understand that saying yes is just the start of the process. > The best dealmakers get to ‘yes’ for one reason: They understand it’s a process. Saying yes keeps you in the game and allows the deal to continue. Most times, the original yes to the deal isn’t the actual deal. But a delay or a no puts you on the outside with no ability to move the process along in your favor. Say yes, and stay in the game and shape the deal as it moves through the process. ## Key takeaway Industry leaders provide seven strategies for securing deals by building trust, speaking their language, and focusing on the process.