What Pixar can teach every salesperson about winning customers

I have lost count of how many times I have watched Jaws. Or Back to the Future. Or the opening ten minutes of Up. Simply put: good films have a habit of sticking with you and not because of big explosions, flashy CGI or clever dialogue, but because they make you care.

Pixar has understood that better than almost anyone, even creating an unofficial “Rules of Storytelling” document that helped direct the creative decisions that would make them such a force in cinema since the early 90’s ($18 billion and counting!). But buried deep within that document is the one line that EVERY salesperson should have pinned above their desk:

It goes like this: “What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they do not succeed?”

Now swap “character” for “customer” and suddenly you are looking at one of the biggest problems (and opportunities) in modern B2B sales.

Most sales conversations have no stakes. No really.  Sales people spend hours talking about features, integrations, dashboards, AI capabilities and implementation plans. They demo products that are genuinely brilliant. Yet still buyers walk away thinking, “Looks good.” rather than “I need this.”

There’s a world of difference.

Think back to Toy Story. The story is not about toys. It is about Woody facing the possibility of becoming irrelevant. The toys do not fight because they are plastic. They fight because losing Andy means losing their purpose.  This simple, yet impactful idea, meant I (and millions of other people) cared because we understand what was at risk.

Or take Finding Nemo. It is not really about a clownfish crossing the ocean. It is about a father confronting the fear that has controlled his entire life. Again, the stakes are not physical, they are emotional.

And this is exactly where many sales teams go wrong.  When I ask salespeople why a prospect should buy, I often hear things like:

“We reduce admin.”, “We automate reporting”, “We save time.”.  All good points. But these are benefits. They are not stakes. They do not give buyers a “must buy” reason.

The better question we should be asking is: What happens if they do not change?

For an accountant, maybe it is another tax season drowning in manual work while competitors embrace automation.  For a CFO, perhaps it is another board meeting explaining why margins are shrinking. For a growing business, it could be missing the opportunity to scale because every process is held together with spreadsheets and crossed fingers.

Now we are talking. Remember every great film creates tension between where someone is today and where they need to get to. Sales should do exactly the same.

One of my favourite moments in cinema comes in Apollo 13.

Nobody sells NASA on the importance of solving the carbon dioxide problem. Nobody presents a PowerPoint. Nobody talks about innovation. Why? Well because everyone in the room already understands the stakes.

Three astronauts do not come home unless they solve it. Extreme example? Absolutely. But the principle is identical: if your customer does not fully appreciate the cost of standing still, they’ll never value moving forward.

For me the best salespeople are not brilliant presenters. They’re brilliant storytellers. They help customers picture two futures: The first where nothing changes and second where everything improves. And best of all they allow the customer to decide which version they’d rather live in.

That is why discovery matters so much. Not because it is another box in MEDDIC or another qualification framework. Discovery is where you uncover the plot. Where you find out what’s frustrating them,  what’s keeping them awake and what’s the consequence of doing nothing.

Until you know those answers, you are simply showing software.

But that is not everything. There’s another great lesson Pixar teaches brilliantly and that is that audiences do not fall in love with perfection. They fall in love with struggle.

Woody is jealous. Marlin is overprotective. Joy gets things wrong. Lightning McQueen is selfish. These flaws make them believable and oddly enough, the same applies in sales.

Customers do not trust polished corporate perfection anymore, they trust honesty.

Why DON’T we tell our prospects where our product is not the best fit? Or talk openly about the implementation challenges?  Let’s share customer stories that include the obstacles, not just happy endings and give the real stories that help us build credibility. Real businesses are messy.

Finally, let me call back to Pixar director Andrew Stanton’s famous line from his TED Talk: “Make me care.”

That is the entire job.

Not “make me understand.” Not “make me impressed.”. Not even “make me believe.”

It is “make me care”.

People rarely buy when they understand something. They buy when they feel the consequences of not acting.

Pixar has spent three decades proving that audiences will happily cry over.

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