And that’s exactly why you should work with me.
I’ve never been good at selling. Not the way most people define it. I don’t pitch. I don’t push product. I don’t walk into a room with a deck full of features, functions, and benefits designed to overwhelm you into a yes. I’ve been in this industry for over four decades, and I have never once closed a deal by selling.
Every deal I’ve ever closed — and some of them have been significant — started the same way. I asked a question. Usually, a question nobody else thought to ask.
That’s not a sales technique. That’s a diagnostic instinct. And after 40 years, I’ve learned to stop apologizing for it.
What I Actually Do
I solve problems. Specifically, I solve problems that prevent organizations from succeeding with technology — not because the technology is wrong, but because the problems were never properly diagnosed before the technology was introduced.
The industry has spent decades selling solutions to problems it never bothered to understand. Vendors lead with features. Consultants lead with frameworks. Analysts lead with quadrants and rankings. Everyone is answering questions that were never asked — while the questions that actually determine success go unexamined.
I ask the questions that go unexamined.
Sometimes those questions sound simple. Deceptively simple. But simple questions, asked at the right moment, have a way of revealing everything.
Here are a few examples from four decades of asking the wrong questions at exactly the right time.
The 4 O’Clock Question
A major government defense contract was failing. The platform responsible for MRO procurement was delivering parts at a 51% next-day rate against a 90% contractual requirement. The client’s request was straightforward: automate the system.
I didn’t automate anything. I asked: what time of day do orders come in?
The answer was 4 PM. Most orders arrived at the end of the day because field technicians were incentivized to complete as many service calls as possible, so they sandbagged their parts orders until their shift was done. By 4 PM, prices on dynamic-flux components had escalated. Shipments couldn’t clear customs overnight. Parts arrived late, at higher cost, and service call close rates collapsed — because the parts needed to complete the repairs weren’t arriving.
No one had connected those dots. The delivery failure wasn’t a technology problem. It was a behavioral problem — competing incentives between the service department and the procurement function that no automation could fix.
The diagnostic led to a system redesign that addressed the actual agents in the equation — suppliers, customs, couriers, and the technicians themselves. Within three months, delivery performance went from 51% to 97.3%. Over seven consecutive years, cost of goods decreased by 23%. The buying group consolidated FTE investment from 23 to 3.
That project was funded through the Government of Canada’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development program. It produced a methodology. The methodology became the foundation for everything I do today.
No one asked me to sell them a system. I asked them a question. The answer built the solution.
The Credit Check That Wasn’t
In the mid-1990s, a leading Canadian PC manufacturer had a promising idea: offer employees of their corporate clients a discount on personal computers through an employee purchase plan. The concept was sound. The execution was failing. Presentation after presentation at factory sites produced single-digit conversion rates.
I didn’t redesign the presentation. I asked: why aren’t they buying?
The answer wasn’t the computers. The computers were fine. The answer was the credit application. Factory workers on hourly wages weren’t going to subject themselves to a credit check for a $4,000 purchase they weren’t sure they’d be approved for. The barrier wasn’t the product. It was the risk of rejection.
So I removed it. I partnered with GE Finance to offer automatic credit approval — no application, no credit check — with payments deducted directly from payroll. The employer’s finance department handled the deductions. GE’s risk was minimized because employed workers with automatic payroll deduction don’t default.
I went to the first factory. Morning shift, afternoon shift, midnight shift. By the time I reached the third city, the client called to say they needed additional fax machines because the order forms wouldn’t stop coming in. Over six weeks, the program generated more than a million dollars in sales. Other manufacturers — Lear Seating, General Motors suppliers — demanded the same program for their employees.
I never once mentioned the brand of the computer. Not the RAM, not the monitor, not the specifications. None of it mattered. What mattered was solving the problem that prevented people from participating.
The Three-and-a-Half-Hour Cold Call
A major global consulting firm was outsourcing its internal IT support function. They had been in discussions with IBM, Toshiba, and several other large providers. I cold-called the project lead. He told me I was at the eleventh hour, they had a board meeting the following week with directors flying in from across the country, and he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do for me.
I asked for 30 minutes.
That 30-minute meeting turned into a three-and-a-half-hour working session. Not because I pitched. Because I asked questions. How do you plan to handle the transition? How will you maintain control of the client relationship once you hand it over? What’s your contingency if the first phase doesn’t meet service levels?
After three and a half hours, the project lead looked at me and said: “I think you just helped me write the perfect plan.”
I presented to the board the following week. Last on the agenda. After IBM. After Toshiba. After lunch. One director from Vancouver was falling asleep. I presented with the same approach — not what we would do for them, but how we could help them achieve what was best for them.
They selected us. Unanimously. Within 48 hours, the large competitors were calling to ask who we were and how we got in the door.
I got in the door by not selling. I got in the door by listening.
The Invoice That Wasn’t a Bill
A national wire service — the Canadian equivalent of the Associated Press — needed help navigating early-stage technology decisions. When I sat down with their VP, my first question was: what are your greatest problems?
It turned out that at that particular moment, what he needed most wasn’t what I had to sell. So I became a resource instead. Over the following weeks, he would call with questions — about emerging technologies, integration challenges, vendor capabilities — and I would research the answers and provide them. Free of charge.
Each month, I sent him a statement. Not an invoice — a statement. It listed every question he had asked, every answer I had provided, and the hours I had invested. When he received the first one, his reaction was immediate: “Do you expect us to pay this?”
I said no. I said: “I want you to understand what I’m investing in this relationship. Technology will change. Vendors will come and go. But if I’m here as a resource — a trusted source of insight and intelligence — it doesn’t matter what the technology is.”
When his first real purchasing need arose, he came to me. Competitors immediately undercut my price by 10%, 15%, 25%. He stayed with me. Because the discount was all they brought to the table. I brought the research, the expertise, and the relationship.
The Pattern
Every one of these stories follows the same structure. I didn’t lead with a product. I didn’t lead with a price. I didn’t lead with a brand or a credential or a quadrant ranking. I led with a question — or more precisely, with genuine curiosity about what was actually going wrong.
The sale was never the point. The diagnosis was the point. The sale was simply what happened after the diagnosis proved correct.
Why This Matters Now
I tell these stories because I find myself at an interesting juncture. After decades of doing this work — building the archive, developing the methodology, validating the frameworks — I’ve formalized what was always an instinct into a structured practice.
The Hansen Fit Score™ is the diagnostic. Phase 0™ is the readiness assessment. RAM 2025™ is the validation system. These aren’t products. They’re instruments — built to ask the questions that determine whether a technology initiative will succeed or fail before the first dollar is committed.
The industry doesn’t need another vendor ranking. It doesn’t need another maturity model. It doesn’t need another metric that counts activity and calls it progress. It needs someone willing to ask the uncomfortable question — what time do orders come in? — and follow the answer wherever it leads.
That’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. I’m just no longer doing it one cold call at a time.
The Part Where I Don’t Sell You Anything
Here’s what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to tell you that you need a Hansen Fit Score™ assessment. I’m not going to tell you that your organization isn’t ready for the transformation you’re planning. I’m not going to tell you that the vendor you’ve selected is a risk.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know — because I haven’t asked you the questions yet.
What I will tell you is this: our assessments are built on an 18-year documented archive. They’ve been validated by ISM, stress-tested by a Fortune 50 procurement executive, confirmed by practicing CIOs running live implementations, and endorsed by analysts who have spent their careers evaluating this industry. The methodology works. The evidence says so. The market says so.
But at the end of the day, it is 100% entirely up to you — the client, the customer, the practitioner — whether you want to take action. I solve problems. I always have. Whether you walk through the door is your decision.
If something in your current initiative doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. That instinct is worth a conversation.
I’m just making sure the door is open and the questions are waiting.
Jon Hansen is the Founder of Hansen Models™ and creator of the Hansen Method™. His work spans four decades of technology implementation, from the Department of National Defence MRO platform to the current Hansen Fit Score™ vendor assessment series. He can be reached through Hansen Models™ or at HPT@HansenProcurement.com.
Procurement Insights
I Am a Lousy Salesperson
Posted on February 28, 2026
0
And that’s exactly why you should work with me.
I’ve never been good at selling. Not the way most people define it. I don’t pitch. I don’t push product. I don’t walk into a room with a deck full of features, functions, and benefits designed to overwhelm you into a yes. I’ve been in this industry for over four decades, and I have never once closed a deal by selling.
Every deal I’ve ever closed — and some of them have been significant — started the same way. I asked a question. Usually, a question nobody else thought to ask.
That’s not a sales technique. That’s a diagnostic instinct. And after 40 years, I’ve learned to stop apologizing for it.
What I Actually Do
I solve problems. Specifically, I solve problems that prevent organizations from succeeding with technology — not because the technology is wrong, but because the problems were never properly diagnosed before the technology was introduced.
The industry has spent decades selling solutions to problems it never bothered to understand. Vendors lead with features. Consultants lead with frameworks. Analysts lead with quadrants and rankings. Everyone is answering questions that were never asked — while the questions that actually determine success go unexamined.
I ask the questions that go unexamined.
Sometimes those questions sound simple. Deceptively simple. But simple questions, asked at the right moment, have a way of revealing everything.
Here are a few examples from four decades of asking the wrong questions at exactly the right time.
The 4 O’Clock Question
A major government defense contract was failing. The platform responsible for MRO procurement was delivering parts at a 51% next-day rate against a 90% contractual requirement. The client’s request was straightforward: automate the system.
I didn’t automate anything. I asked: what time of day do orders come in?
The answer was 4 PM. Most orders arrived at the end of the day because field technicians were incentivized to complete as many service calls as possible, so they sandbagged their parts orders until their shift was done. By 4 PM, prices on dynamic-flux components had escalated. Shipments couldn’t clear customs overnight. Parts arrived late, at higher cost, and service call close rates collapsed — because the parts needed to complete the repairs weren’t arriving.
No one had connected those dots. The delivery failure wasn’t a technology problem. It was a behavioral problem — competing incentives between the service department and the procurement function that no automation could fix.
The diagnostic led to a system redesign that addressed the actual agents in the equation — suppliers, customs, couriers, and the technicians themselves. Within three months, delivery performance went from 51% to 97.3%. Over seven consecutive years, cost of goods decreased by 23%. The buying group consolidated FTE investment from 23 to 3.
That project was funded through the Government of Canada’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development program. It produced a methodology. The methodology became the foundation for everything I do today.
No one asked me to sell them a system. I asked them a question. The answer built the solution.
The Credit Check That Wasn’t
In the mid-1990s, a leading Canadian PC manufacturer had a promising idea: offer employees of their corporate clients a discount on personal computers through an employee purchase plan. The concept was sound. The execution was failing. Presentation after presentation at factory sites produced single-digit conversion rates.
I didn’t redesign the presentation. I asked: why aren’t they buying?
The answer wasn’t the computers. The computers were fine. The answer was the credit application. Factory workers on hourly wages weren’t going to subject themselves to a credit check for a $4,000 purchase they weren’t sure they’d be approved for. The barrier wasn’t the product. It was the risk of rejection.
So I removed it. I partnered with GE Finance to offer automatic credit approval — no application, no credit check — with payments deducted directly from payroll. The employer’s finance department handled the deductions. GE’s risk was minimized because employed workers with automatic payroll deduction don’t default.
I went to the first factory. Morning shift, afternoon shift, midnight shift. By the time I reached the third city, the client called to say they needed additional fax machines because the order forms wouldn’t stop coming in. Over six weeks, the program generated more than a million dollars in sales. Other manufacturers — Lear Seating, General Motors suppliers — demanded the same program for their employees.
I never once mentioned the brand of the computer. Not the RAM, not the monitor, not the specifications. None of it mattered. What mattered was solving the problem that prevented people from participating.
The Three-and-a-Half-Hour Cold Call
A major global consulting firm was outsourcing its internal IT support function. They had been in discussions with IBM, Toshiba, and several other large providers. I cold-called the project lead. He told me I was at the eleventh hour, they had a board meeting the following week with directors flying in from across the country, and he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do for me.
I asked for 30 minutes.
That 30-minute meeting turned into a three-and-a-half-hour working session. Not because I pitched. Because I asked questions. How do you plan to handle the transition? How will you maintain control of the client relationship once you hand it over? What’s your contingency if the first phase doesn’t meet service levels?
After three and a half hours, the project lead looked at me and said: “I think you just helped me write the perfect plan.”
I presented to the board the following week. Last on the agenda. After IBM. After Toshiba. After lunch. One director from Vancouver was falling asleep. I presented with the same approach — not what we would do for them, but how we could help them achieve what was best for them.
They selected us. Unanimously. Within 48 hours, the large competitors were calling to ask who we were and how we got in the door.
I got in the door by not selling. I got in the door by listening.
The Invoice That Wasn’t a Bill
A national wire service — the Canadian equivalent of the Associated Press — needed help navigating early-stage technology decisions. When I sat down with their VP, my first question was: what are your greatest problems?
It turned out that at that particular moment, what he needed most wasn’t what I had to sell. So I became a resource instead. Over the following weeks, he would call with questions — about emerging technologies, integration challenges, vendor capabilities — and I would research the answers and provide them. Free of charge.
Each month, I sent him a statement. Not an invoice — a statement. It listed every question he had asked, every answer I had provided, and the hours I had invested. When he received the first one, his reaction was immediate: “Do you expect us to pay this?”
I said no. I said: “I want you to understand what I’m investing in this relationship. Technology will change. Vendors will come and go. But if I’m here as a resource — a trusted source of insight and intelligence — it doesn’t matter what the technology is.”
When his first real purchasing need arose, he came to me. Competitors immediately undercut my price by 10%, 15%, 25%. He stayed with me. Because the discount was all they brought to the table. I brought the research, the expertise, and the relationship.
The Pattern
Every one of these stories follows the same structure. I didn’t lead with a product. I didn’t lead with a price. I didn’t lead with a brand or a credential or a quadrant ranking. I led with a question — or more precisely, with genuine curiosity about what was actually going wrong.
The sale was never the point. The diagnosis was the point. The sale was simply what happened after the diagnosis proved correct.
Why This Matters Now
I tell these stories because I find myself at an interesting juncture. After decades of doing this work — building the archive, developing the methodology, validating the frameworks — I’ve formalized what was always an instinct into a structured practice.
The Hansen Fit Score™ is the diagnostic. Phase 0™ is the readiness assessment. RAM 2025™ is the validation system. These aren’t products. They’re instruments — built to ask the questions that determine whether a technology initiative will succeed or fail before the first dollar is committed.
The industry doesn’t need another vendor ranking. It doesn’t need another maturity model. It doesn’t need another metric that counts activity and calls it progress. It needs someone willing to ask the uncomfortable question — what time do orders come in? — and follow the answer wherever it leads.
That’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. I’m just no longer doing it one cold call at a time.
The Part Where I Don’t Sell You Anything
Here’s what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to tell you that you need a Hansen Fit Score™ assessment. I’m not going to tell you that your organization isn’t ready for the transformation you’re planning. I’m not going to tell you that the vendor you’ve selected is a risk.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know — because I haven’t asked you the questions yet.
What I will tell you is this: our assessments are built on an 18-year documented archive. They’ve been validated by ISM, stress-tested by a Fortune 50 procurement executive, confirmed by practicing CIOs running live implementations, and endorsed by analysts who have spent their careers evaluating this industry. The methodology works. The evidence says so. The market says so.
But at the end of the day, it is 100% entirely up to you — the client, the customer, the practitioner — whether you want to take action. I solve problems. I always have. Whether you walk through the door is your decision.
If something in your current initiative doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. That instinct is worth a conversation.
I’m just making sure the door is open and the questions are waiting.
Jon Hansen is the Founder of Hansen Models™ and creator of the Hansen Method™. His work spans four decades of technology implementation, from the Department of National Defence MRO platform to the current Hansen Fit Score™ vendor assessment series. He can be reached through Hansen Models™ or at HPT@HansenProcurement.com.
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