The Kinds of Sales

Where this lesson sits. Lesson 2 of 7 in How Selling Works. Builds on: Sales, defined honestly. Next: The skills every sale needs.

A junior rep gets handed a $20K SMB deal one week and a $2M enterprise opportunity the next. Same notes, same questions, same demo flow. The first one closes in nine days. The second one stalls at month four when procurement asks for a SOC 2 report and a security questionnaire the rep has never seen.

That second deal was not lost on price or product. It was lost because the rep ran a small-business playbook on an enterprise shape. The buyer’s decision wasn’t the same kind of decision, so the same motions didn’t work.

Most public sales content sorts kinds-of-sales by seller behavior (B2B vs B2C, inside vs field, transactional vs consultative). That’s useful for org charts. It is less useful when you’re trying to figure out what to actually do this week. A more useful sort is by buyer behavior, by the shape of the decision the buyer is making.

Four axes the buyer decides along

Any sale you encounter can be located on four axes. Run these once before the first meeting.

1. How many people have to say yes? One person (their own money or their own budget), one person plus a manager, a small committee (3 to 5), a formal procurement process (committee plus legal plus security plus finance).
2. How reversible is the decision? Can they cancel next month for free, are they locked in for a year, is there a one-time integration cost they can’t recover, do they have to lay off staff if it doesn’t work?
3. How much do they research alone before talking to you? None (they call cold), some Googling, a serious review of three to five vendors, a six-month formal evaluation with an RFP.
4. What’s their public exposure if this fails? None (private decision), team gossip, their boss notices, the whole company notices, the press notices.

The combination tells you which kind of sale this actually is. The same product can be sold five different ways depending on where it lands on these axes.

A taxonomy by buyer shape, with examples

Here is the standard taxonomy, re-anchored on what the buyer is doing.

Self-serve. One person, fully reversible, all research is alone, no public exposure. They sign up on a website, try the free tier, upgrade in-app. The “sale” is the marketing copy, the docs, and the trial experience. Examples: most consumer SaaS (Notion personal, Spotify, a $9/month app). The seller’s job is to remove friction, not to talk.

Transactional B2C. One person, reversible, research is alone or with a partner, low public exposure. They walk into a store, browse, decide, pay. Examples: clothing, restaurants, a phone plan. The seller’s job is to be helpful when asked and disappear when not.

Considered B2C. One person plus a partner or family, semi-reversible, significant research, some social exposure. Cars, houses, weddings, a $4,000 mattress. The seller’s job is to be patient, answer hard questions, and never push on the day the buyer first walks in.

SMB B2B. Usually one decision-maker (often the founder), fast cycle, modest reversibility, peer-review research (Reddit, podcasts, asking three friends), team-internal exposure. A 30-person company picks a payroll provider. The seller’s job is to give honest answers fast and not waste the founder’s time with a six-stage pipeline.

Mid-market B2B. A small committee (3 to 5), 60 to 120 day cycle, formal review starts, some inter-team exposure. A 300-person company picks a customer support tool. The seller’s job is to find a champion who will sell internally, then equip them.

Enterprise B2B. Formal procurement, 6 to 18 month cycles, hard to reverse without a major write-off, multi-team exposure including the C-suite. A 5,000-person company picks a security platform. The seller’s job is most of the work, and it’s almost entirely about navigating the buyer’s internal politics, not about the product.

Channel sales. A third party (a partner, a reseller, a system integrator) sells for you to their end customer. The “buyer” is two-tiered: the partner buys the relationship, the end customer buys the product. Examples: any major software company with a partner network. The seller’s job at the partner tier is to make the partner more successful when they win.

PLG / community-led. The buyer evaluates the product by using it (alone or with a small team) before talking to anyone. By the time they want to talk to a human, they have already half-decided. Examples: Figma, Linear, GitHub. The seller’s job is to recognize the late-stage buyer and not insult them by treating them like a stranger.

Founder-led / consulting. The seller IS the brand. Personal trust is the entire deal. Reversibility depends on the engagement structure. Public exposure is high (the buyer is hiring a person, not a firm with bench depth). Covered in detail in lesson 6.

A 90-second diagnostic before any first meeting

Before you talk to a new prospect, score these four questions and write the answers down. Anywhere works: a notebook, a sticky note, the bottom of your CRM record.

1. Who has to say yes besides this person?
2. If we deliver and it goes badly, what’s the worst thing that happens to them personally?
3. How many vendors are they actually looking at?
4. Have they done a thing like this before, or is this a first?

If you score this in 90 seconds, you have the playbook. Self-serve buyer? Send the doc link. SMB founder? Skip discovery, demo in 20 minutes, send a one-page proposal. Enterprise security buyer? Get a security pack ready before they ask, find the champion before you present, ask about the procurement process on the first call.

The biggest single source of wasted weeks in early-career sales is mismatched shape: running the wrong motion on the right buyer.

When you can’t win the kind of sale you’re in

There are kinds of sales that your product, or your stage, simply cannot serve well right now. Enterprise procurement when you don’t have SOC 2 yet. Mid-market committee decisions when you are a one-person company that the procurement team will not approve as a vendor. Self-serve buyers when your product still needs a 30-minute setup call.

When the shape of the sale doesn’t match what you can deliver, the honest move is to name it. “I want to be straight with you. The way you’re set up to buy this kind of tool isn’t a fit for where we are right now. If you want a recommendation for two vendors who do match, I am happy to send them.”

You will lose the deal. You will keep the relationship. The buyer will remember that you knew the shape of what they needed and were honest about not being it. Six months later, when their situation changes or when you have caught up to their procurement bar, they will be the first call.

Mismatched shape kills more pipelines than mismatched product. Spend the 90 seconds.

Every buyer speaks a different dialect, and the usual playbook is what loses the one who isn’t usual. We turned this lesson into a song, The Usual (also on Suno).

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A note from the team. This course is from TAKE INTEREST Inc. We build tools for people whose work depends on remembering context. Every conversation, every commitment, every reason a deal moved or didn’t. If you are in sales, or anywhere that “what was said three months ago” changes today’s call, we are open to design partners. The contact form is the door. Short message, ~48 hour response.

Take Interest Inc. (2026). The Kinds of Sales. Take Interest. https://takeinterest.ai/blog/the-kinds-of-sales