Four things I learned about sales strategy from Aleasha Bahr

(A brilliant sales strategist I interviewed this week)

If it’s a fit, it’s a fact.

That is one of the most helpful sentences I’ve encountered in business, because anyone who’s ever done sales has felt that awkwardness; that uncomfortable feeling of trying to convince an unwilling prospect to become your customer.

Aleasha Bahr, a brilliant sales consultant and the author of Black Sheep Sales: How to Win More Sales Without Acting Like a Douchebag, gives language to something most professionals feel but struggle to articulate.

Aleasha’s method means you never have to feel that way again.

Her approach is simple: there are perfect customers for you. And if you stop wasting time trying to sell to the wrong people, you will free up time to find the right people.

This tiny mindset shift completely changes the way you approach sales.

I interviewed Aleasha this week, and here are four things I learned:

Manipulation doesn’t work in sales (it never really did)

A lot of traditional sales training is built around one objective: get a yes.

That single-minded focus is where things start to go wrong.

When the only goal is a yes, the conversation becomes subtly manipulative. You can feel it when you’re on the receiving end: the nudging, the cornering, the psychological tricks designed to override someone’s instincts rather than respect them.

Aleasha made a point I keep coming back to: nobody minds buying, but nobody wants to be sold.

The irony is that manipulation actually reduces the number of ‘yesses’ you get. People sense when a conversation is about your goals rather than their needs. And once that trust goes, the sale is already dead - even if you manage to force it over the line.

If it’s genuinely a fit, there’s nothing to manipulate. You have what they need. Their expectations align with what you can deliver. The decision becomes obvious, not engineered.

And if it’s not a fit? The most professional thing you can do is name that early - for both of you.

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The anti-audience matters as much as your ideal customer

One of the most useful ideas Aleasha shared was the concept of the anti-audience.

Most people obsess over their ideal customer. Age, industry, job title, revenue band. Very few spend any time being explicit about who they don’t want to work with.

And that’s where a lot of pain comes from.

Nightmare clients aren’t accidents. They’re patterns: Unrealistic expectations. A belief that you’ll do all the work while they do none. A lack of respect for time, boundaries, or expertise.

Instead of trying to manage those people later, Aleasha’s approach is to surface that upfront.

This isn’t about being rude or provocative for the sake of it. It’s about clarity.

You can say:
This isn’t for people who just want to tick a box.
This isn’t for clients who expect magic without effort.
This isn’t for anyone who wants a partner they can micromanage.

What’s interesting is that doing this doesn’t repel everyone. It repels the wrong people - and makes the right ones lean in harder.

Because the right clients feel the relief immediately. They recognise themselves in what is being described, and they trust you more for being honest about what won’t work.

Sales becomes calmer (and more effective) when you stop trying to be for everyone.

Desperation is louder than words

There was another point Aleasha made that really stuck with me: people can feel desperation a mile off.

You can say all the right things. You can follow the “right” process. But if, underneath it all, your real goal is to close the deal because you need the deal, that energy leaks out everywhere.

Tone. Pace. Body language. The subtle pressure to keep talking when silence would be better.

Most sales advice tries to fix this with techniques: scripts, pauses, specific words to use or avoid. Aleasha takes a different route.

She talks about intention.

If your intention is genuinely to work out whether this person is a fit - not to get a yes, not to hit a target, not to make payroll - then everything else settles naturally. You stop performing. You listen properly. You’re more willing to say no.

Ironically, that’s when people feel safest. And when people feel safe, they’re far more likely to say yes.

Because they know they’re allowed to say no.

Sales confidence doesn’t come from clever tactics. It comes from detachment - and from knowing you’re protecting your future self from the cost of the wrong client.

AI is both a help and a hindrance to sales

When the conversation turned to AI, Aleasha was refreshingly blunt.

She uses AI for research. Pattern spotting. Prep. The unglamorous groundwork that saves time and sharpens judgement.

What she doesn’t use it for is pretending to be human.

And that distinction matters.

A lot of what’s currently being sold as “AI-powered sales” is just automation dressed up as insight. Outreach emails stitched together from LinkedIn headlines. Generic messages passed off as personal. Bots that sound almost human, until they don’t.

It’s easy to spot. Easier to ignore.

What AI is actually doing is flooding the market with average. Which makes judgement, empathy, and original thinking far more valuable than they were before (I said as much recently in my post on AI sales strategy).

Good sales has always been about nuance. About listening properly. About knowing when to lean in and when to walk away. Those are not things AI can do - and anyone pretending otherwise is usually selling a tool, not telling the truth.

In that sense, AI is a stress test.

If your sales process relied on scripts, tricks, or pressure, it’s starting to look very obvious. If it relied on clarity, fit, and human judgement, it’s standing out more than ever.

The bar hasn’t been raised. The floor has dropped.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Watch the full interview if you want 2026 to be the year you sell more:

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