--- title: "Fear in B2B Sales: What to Do When a Buyer Is Choosing Between You and a Competitor" description: Your buyer says she is choosing between you and a competitor. Josh Hedaya on why sales mode breeds distrust and the four questions that name her real fear. --- [Skip to content](https://go.connectionselling.io/connection-selling-blog/fear-in-b2b-sales-what-to-do-when-a-buyer-is-choosing-between-you-and-a-competitor#main-content) Get started Get started # Fear in B2B Sales: What to Do When a Buyer Is Choosing Between You and a Competitor ![Josh Hedaya](https://7528315.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528315/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-cms-elevate-theme_hubspot/elevate/images/avatar-placeholder.jpg?width=48&height=48&name=avatar-placeholder.jpg) Josh Hedaya October 12, 2026 **The short answer:** do not go into sales mode. Listing features and pointing at the other firm's gaps is fear, and the buyer feels it the second it shows up. Ask how she is going to decide, ask what she is weighing, ask what she is afraid of, and let her say her fears out loud. That alone earns trust. Here is the deal that taught me that. ## Fear, at its worst and at its best At its worst, it stops the best of us from acting on what we want. It pulls us out of the room we're standing in. At its best, it pushes us to change what needs changing. Both showed up on one B2B deal, on the buyer's side of the table, and on mine. A story in five parts. ## 1. The setup: three calls with one buyer A while back a buyer told me, on our third call, that she was choosing between me and another firm. That kind of honesty is rare in B2B. Buyers hide the competition because they're afraid of being sold. Lower that fear enough and they tell you the truth. Here's how we got there. ### First meeting: discovery I put my agenda away and listened using the Connection Code. She had a real problem and she wanted it solved yesterday. Her current vendor had a fine product and bad service. I didn't get thirsty. I asked questions until she made the connection herself that we could fix it. ### Second meeting: proposal She told me her number. She picked Option 2. I confirmed timing and confirmed she was the decision maker. We put a placeholder on the calendar two weeks out. In between, she asked for a contract by email. I sent it. ## 2. The moment of fear: two contracts in legal review Third meeting. She shows up, which is always a good sign. Then she tells me her legal team is reviewing two contracts. Ours and a competitor's. She's deciding this week. ## 3. The trap: why sales mode breeds distrust Every salesperson has the same impulse here. Go into sales mode. List the features. Talk up your service. Point at the other firm's gaps. Offer references to prove it. That impulse is fear. Fear of losing the deal. And the buyer feels it the second it shows up. That is exactly what breeds distrust. ## 4. Listening: the questions that named her fear My first thought was, why is she telling me this? My second thought was, she's telling me for a reason. She was feeling me out. She was evaluating me. So I wanted to understand how she was going to decide. ### How is she going to decide? **Me:** "What's going to make you decide which way you want to go?" **Stacy:** "Honestly, it's just going to come down to my gut. I've talked to everybody I want to talk to. I've asked everybody to make the decision for me, and nobody has. I really don't want to make the wrong decision, so it comes down to me." There it is. Fear at its worst. A smart, capable buyer asking everyone she knows to decide for her so she doesn't have to own it. Now the rule. Stay on the buyer's side of the field. If you let them work through the problem with you, they see you as the advisor they want. Not the vendor they're being sold by. So I didn't argue with her gut. I asked her what it was made of. ### What is she actually weighing? **Me:** "If you're willing to answer, what are you actually weighing?" **Stacy:** "Two things are front of mind. Flexibility. Somebody that can grow with us. And customer service, because my last vendor's was so lacking." **Me:** "How do you evaluate that?" **Stacy:** "It's a gut thing. I can tell when somebody is genuine versus BS-ing. It's not 'this is what our customer service is.' It's a customer care type feeling." Notice what I didn't do. I didn't tell her we were flexible. I didn't tell her our service was great. She told me what she was measuring, and I asked her how she'd measure it. That's the whole game. The trap is to hear "flexibility" and "service" and start proving you have them. The second you do that, you're selling, and she knows it. ### What is she afraid of? Then near the end, she said something that gave the whole thing away. **Stacy:** "You get burned by somebody, you tend to get cautious, right?" **Me:** "What are you afraid of?" **Stacy:** "Picking the wrong company and having to go through this again." **Me:** "How will you know if you picked the wrong company?" **Stacy:** "I won't right away. That's the problem." **Me:** "What will happen in three to six months if you picked wrong? What will you start seeing?" **Stacy:** "Bad customer service. Non-responsive. Difficult to work with." ### Her real gauge, in her own words And then she handed me her real decision, in her own words: "You hire vendors to help you do things, and my last vendor was taking time away from me. So that's the gauge. Are you making my life easier or harder?" I felt the pull right there. I even said it out loud: "There are things I'd like to say, but I don't know how to say them without sounding salesy." She laughed. "It's fine. I've been in sales." I fought it. I told her I got what she was trying to evaluate, and that nothing I could say was going to make that decision for her. She had her gauge. She'd know it when she saw it. My job was to stay on her side of the field while she looked. ## 5. What this means for your next competitive deal Her gut was not a mystery. It was fear of being burned again. Four questions gave it a name. Once it had a name, she could test both of us against it. - "What's going to make you decide which way you want to go?" - "If you're willing to answer, what are you actually weighing?" - "What are you afraid of?" - "What will happen in three to six months if you picked wrong?" Don't underestimate the value of getting a potential client to say her fears out loud to you. Not solving them. Not reassuring her. Just letting her say them. That alone earns trust. ### The fear on the seller's side It's also the hardest part. Because that's where the doubt and fear come in on our side. After that call I second-guessed myself for a week. I've closed thousands of B2B deals. It didn't matter. Should I have closed her harder? Should I have been more assertive? Did I just let a deal walk out the door because I refused to sell? That doubt is the same fear she had. The trap for salespeople is that we think we're in control. We're not. We never were. Our job is to create a conversation where we listen intently and let the buyer make the decision herself. When you do that, they pick you. Because nobody else does that. She signed the next week. Not because I sold her. Because she decided. **What your buyer is afraid of is the deal. Everything else is noise.** Get the free [Secrets of B2B Follow-Up](https://go.connectionselling.io/follow-up), and sign up for [The Sales Tape](https://go.connectionselling.io/sales-tape). ## Share this post [mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fgo.connectionselling.io%2Fconnection-selling-blog%2Ffear-in-b2b-sales-what-to-do-when-a-buyer-is-choosing-between-you-and-a-competitor](mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fgo.connectionselling.io%2Fconnection-selling-blog%2Ffear-in-b2b-sales-what-to-do-when-a-buyer-is-choosing-between-you-and-a-competitor) ## Keep reading ### [Your Blog Post Title Here...](https://go.connectionselling.io/connection-selling-blog/a-prospect-ghosted-me-after-i-sent-the-proposal-what-should-i-do-next) # Connection Selling --- Privacy Policy · Legal · © 2026. 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