I’ve spent most of my working life in and around lubricants, carrying a bag, leading teams, consulting, training, and lately listening to buyers at scale. Along the way I’ve watched good people lose deals they should have won and win deals they didn’t expect, usually for reasons that had little to do with product and everything to do with how we sell.
This book exists because the ground has shifted. Buyers have changed; quietly at first, then all at once. The sellers who thrive now are the ones who adapt their behaviour, language and cadence to match how buyers actually buy. Those who struggle tend to cling to an old playbook built for a face-to-face, “send a deck”, patience-rich world. That world has gone.
The moment the old playbook broke
It didn’t snap in one meeting. It frayed across dozens of accounts until the pattern was impossible to ignore. Working with distributors, manufacturers and OEM partners, we kept seeing the same frontline signals:
- Full calendars, thin pipelines. Lots of activity, little movement. Reviews full of demos and “catch-ups”, not decisions.
- Ghosting after “great” meetings. Deck delivered, demo done, then silence, because nothing new was added beyond what the buyer already knew.
- Single-threaded deals. Strong with Maintenance or a friendly engineer; invisible to the economic buyer. Trials passed, business case missing.
- Slow micro-responses. Simple questions took days. Momentum died between emails. Competitors who replied quickly, usefully, won by inches.
- Price-only conversations. Proposals written for us (features, history, logos), not for them (risk removed, outcomes, time to value).
What buyers told us on the coalface was painfully consistent:
“We’d shortlisted you before the meeting. Stop opening with your company slide.”
“Give me the operational impact in one page. What gets better, by when?”
“If you can’t reply fast with something useful, I assume implementation will be slow too.”
“Walk the approval path with me. Who needs what to say yes?”
Leaders saw the downstream effects:
- Forecasts slipping at the finish line.
- Discounts creeping in to “get it over the line”.
- CRMs optimistic by a mile because budget and approval path weren’t mapped.
- Weeks spent on suspects who were never going to buy.
That’s when it was obvious: the old playbook of long decks, feature tours and “we’ll wait to hear back” was broken. The teams who won were doing something simpler and sharper. Validate what the buyer already knows, elevate with one fresh insight, move fast with value, and qualify hard against budget, approval path and the true decision-maker.
Listening harder than we talk
I didn’t want to write “Steve’s greatest hits”. I wanted to ground the book in what buyers say matters. Over three years we ran The Buyer Revolution research, and the insights reflect the common themes and behavioural shifts observed across these five data sets: Solve Your Own Problems, Speed of Response, People or Brand, Day-to-Day Activities, and The Account Manager. Different questions, overlapping truths: buyers expect us to help them self-serve, respond quickly, cut the jargon, know our application stuff, and make the experience simpler, not noisier.
Those findings shaped the decision to write a book that isn’t just about what to do, but how to do it in the real world of lubricants, base oils, finished lubricants, services, all of it.
Why tell the story through Dan Wilder?
Advice is easy to ignore. A story sticks. Dan Wilder is a composite of people I’ve worked with (and been): capable, decent, routine-driven and suddenly out of step with a buyer-led market. Through Dan’s eyes we can look at the uncomfortable bits: deals that slipped because we never met the economic buyer, trials that proved the technical case but not the business case, pipelines full of hope rather than honest probabilities.
Dan’s journey turns ideas into muscle memory. You see the small shifts a tighter email, a clearer meeting plan, a braver qualification question and the bigger results that follow.
From research to routines (not rhetoric)
There’s no shortage of sales advice. What’s scarce is advice that respects the technical nature of our work and the constraints of our buyers. The book focuses on routines you can actually live with:
- Validate, then elevate – Start by confirming what the buyer already knows; add one fresh insight that moves the decision forward.
- Speed wins – Acknowledge fast, add value immediately, and propose a next step the same day.
- Qualify hard – Suspects never buy. Map budget, approval path and the economic buyer early to avoid single-thread risk.
- Outcomes over features – Translate technical excellence into operational impact in plain English.
- Work to the buyer’s rhythm – Digital first, hybrid thereafter; replace “check-ins” with tools buyers can use now.
To make that repeatable, I’ve anchored the book in two practical frameworks used with teams globally:
- SPANCOP – A clean way to see where each opportunity really sits and what must happen next.
- WOPPA – A simple pre-call planning lens:
These aren’t theories; they’re habits. Built into calendars. Baked into reviews. Visible in CRMs. They de-dramatise selling and help you move one solid step at a time.
The digital and AI reality
There’s a lot of noise about “digital transformation” and AI. The practical bit is simple: buyers are already digital shortlists formed before you arrive, questions asked in portals and chats, decisions nudged by how quick and helpful you are online. AI is now table stakes for speed and consistency—summarising notes, drafting first-pass emails, pulling case snippets, prioritising follow-ups.
The book doesn’t hype the tech; it helps you wield it. Think augment, not automate – use tools to remove admin friction so you can spend more time preparing better questions, crafting clearer outcomes, and following up faster.
Who I wrote it for
- Account managers and application specialists juggling complex approvals, technical trials and margin pressure.
- Distributors and manufacturers who need a shared language across sales, technical and supply chain.
- Sales leaders and coaches who want simple, inspectable behaviours they can reinforce every week.
If you operate in lubricants, you’ll recognise the settings: plant rooms and procurement calls, VMI conversations, additive debates, warranty worries, and the dance between engineering truth and commercial reality.
What I hope this book does
- Gives you confidence. Not bravado – clarity about the next step and why it matters.
- Shortens cycles. By making each touch count and keeping momentum visible.
- Protects margin. Because clear outcomes and proof reduce the need to discount.
- Elevates conversations. From “features and price” to “risk removed and performance gained”.
How to use the book
Each chapter ends with two sections: Key Takeaways and Actions Today. Use them. Pick one behaviour per week, rewrite an email template, tighten your WOPPA before a visit, re-stage your pipeline review around SPANCOP. Share what works with your team. Small, consistent improvements beat sporadic heroics.
If you lead a team, run a simple cadence: Monday planning with WOPPA; mid-week “value-in” checkpoints (what did we give buyers this week?); Friday SPANCOP review focused on moving one stage, not reporting numbers.
A final word
This book is a thank you to the buyers who told us the truth, to the sellers who were brave enough to change, and to the teams who keep raising the bar. If you’ve ever felt that uneasy gap between your effort and your results, I’ve been there. Dan has too. The good news is that a few clear habits can close that gap quickly.
If this resonates, you’ll find the full story, the tools and the ready-to-use templates inside Selling Lubricants Smarter. And if you put the ideas to work, I’d love to hear what changed – faster replies, cleaner trials, steadier margins, better relationships. That’s why I wrote it.
Ready to put this into practice?
Buy the book here: sellinglubricantssmarter.com
