EP345 · Economy · first published 2025-08-08
Sales has something to say | Kert Kenner | Negotiator 345
The Neuvottelija half of a twin recording made with Kert Kenner's Myynnillä on asiaa podcast the same morning. Sales trainer Kenner and Miettinen map marketing, sales and negotiation onto a single funnel — with Miettinen's magnet as the new metaphor for the moment agreement snaps shut — then work through inbound versus outbound, the parasocial relationship a podcast builds, what AI agents are already doing to sales work, and why free is the worst price of all.
Sales has something to say | Kert Kenner
Summary: Episode 345 is the Neuvottelija half of a twin recording: Miettinen had come straight from Kert Kenner’s studio, where they recorded Myynnillä on asiaa #8 on why companies should build their own media. This one is the sales and negotiation half. It opens on Guns N’ Roses, a Tesla and a joke about the jacket Kenner left in the car.
Kenner’s background
Kenner is originally from Tallinn — the name puzzles people — and moved to Finland with his Estonian parents at eleven, having seen the Soviet-era contrast first hand. Twenty-four years developing sales: twenty of them growing a larger training company as a partner, the last four on his own. He now works with large brands on sales development programmes and speaks at events on modern selling, and Myynnillä on asiaa is a few months old — a solo project after four years of doing a sales podcast with a co-host, and he is emphatic that doing your own gives you your own shape and your own guests.
One funnel, four stages
Miettinen offers his visual model and Kenner accepts it. At the wide end, a universe of people who do not know you exist, then marketing pulling them toward you, then sales as the funnel narrows and you qualify inside the trap, then negotiation — and then, crucially, account management, where the relationship is either developed and upsold or the customer swims out of the net and returns to the top of the funnel.
Kenner’s addition is that the last stage is where most companies fail: the entire focus goes on the first sale, and what follows gets called after-market rather than being run as customer leadership.
Both agree the labels — funnel, bowtie, flywheel — matter less than the elements.
The magnet
The metaphor Miettinen invented on air in the sister episode and cannot let go of. There is a positive magnet on the deal side and a repelling one on the customer’s, orbiting at a distance; the negotiator’s job is to close that distance until it snaps. The agreement is signed at the snap, and only then does anyone sell anything for money.
Kenner uses it to make his sharpest point about negotiation. He has watched hundreds of real negotiations and given feedback on them, and what he sees is talk that never comes near the snap — a salesperson dropping into the chair and asking whether the customer had something in mind. A negotiation needs an agenda, an intended outcome and next steps, closed with a summary: as I understand it we established these things, the next meeting could cover this, shall we move to a proposal.
Which produces his correction of a phrase Miettinen keeps teasing him with. Always be closing is not one theatrical moment where you pull the rabbit out of the hat. It is closing every stage and every interim objective — and establishing trust is itself a closing step.
Sales tech, from the banker’s side
Miettinen’s day job supplies the case studies. Translink sold Liidu to SalesManago, a Nordic-to-Central-European synergy where the Finnish product identifies prospects arriving on a web shop and the buyer’s platform works the customers already inside it. And Profinder — which he cheerfully describes as a better Vainu, to the discomfort of everyone involved — went to the listed media group Ilkka.
What he observes from that seat is a reversal. SaaS companies that pushed product-led selling hard, on the assumption that a free tier converts itself, are finding that as AI floods the market with cheap content those conversions have become too thin. The key account manager is coming back, brought forward in the process to bring the customer in personally, precisely because nobody believes the bots any more.
Bezos, not Einstein
Kenner’s favourite reframe, which he notes is usually misattributed. Everyone asks what will change; the more useful question is what will stay the same — Amazon’s version being that customers will always want it cheap, fast and reliably.
His answer for sales is human interaction. Not everyone wants it, but most do, and in an age where you cannot tell whether you are talking to an agent, personal service becomes a competitive advantage precisely because time is scarce and spending your own is a signal. A prospective client had recently thanked him for using his own valuable time to come in person.
Miettinen’s parallel observation is why scripted outreach stopped working. The AI three-message sequence is recognisable on sight — the opener, the nudge, the I’ll stop bothering you now — and when it arrives through several channels at once people go numb. Which is exactly why a real call from someone you actually know still gets answered, at least by those of them old-school enough to answer the phone.
Inbound, outbound, and the parasocial relationship
Kenner rejects the popular formulation that outbound is the shortcut to success and inbound produces nothing but splinters. His position is both, and he has used the term full-bound for it — with the concession that badly targeted content does generate the wrong enquiries, which is a targeting problem rather than an argument against content.
The mechanism that makes inbound work is the one Miettinen names: the parasocial relationship. Ten episodes is enough. When the need finally arrives, the buyer contacts the person whose voice has been on their running route for years rather than a stranger they have never heard of. Kenner cites research putting as much as 95 per cent of B2B purchase decisions as effectively made online before any contact, with the buyer doing extensive analysis and, increasingly, delegating the search to an agent.
Kenner’s own line, which he repeats through both episodes: a salesperson’s workplace is in the customer’s mind. He got tired of explaining who he was at the start of every meeting, and content solved it — it sells him 24/7.
What AI is actually doing to sales work
Miettinen raises the shift in search: Google has had to place an AI summary beside the results, and users going natively to ChatGPT or Perplexity never see the Google experience at all — with agentic search now arriving on top of that.
Kenner’s field report is more sceptical than the vendor material. HubSpot’s figure of two hours fifteen minutes saved per salesperson per day is one he does not fully believe, because adoption out in the field remains low — generative AI barely used, agents almost not at all. But the direction is not in doubt: an agent had already produced a memo from their own calendar entry while some salespeople still two-finger type theirs after a meeting.
His prediction about where the disruption comes from is the sharpest part. Not from the large brands with thousands of employees, which cannot easily cut people and will resist to the end — but from the one-person firm running an army of a hundred agents behind it. He accepts, without flinching, that this may eventually include sales trainers: his answer is to spend his own time on the genuinely strategic work and let agents take the rest.
On tooling, both treat the CRM choice as strategic now that the AI is built into it. The four Kenner meets are Dynamics, Pipedrive, HubSpot and Salesforce; Translink runs HubSpot, Miettinen has used Salesforce and rates its assistant as further along. Miettinen wants a personal butler agent spanning all his interfaces, and names the reason he has not built one: the security exposure is real, which is an argument for the slower large vendors who take it seriously. Kenner adds the under-discussed question — when you send an agent out to act for you, how much does it represent you, and what is the brand risk?
He mentions, as the thing that should concentrate minds, that Salesforce people described AI cold calls already being made in which you cannot tell you are not speaking to a person.
Why adoption alone never delivers
The most transferable lesson, and it is Kenner’s. Over 24 years he has watched the same pattern: once we get HubSpot, once we get Salesforce, once we get AI — and then the hangover, because the expectation was that adoption alone would produce the benefit. It does not, because there is still a person who hates using computers.
The fix is to build the concept and the model around the tool, and to keep answering Simon Sinek’s why out loud, because a change that is easy to state is not easy to land.
Miettinen’s neighbouring complaint is that speaking, leading and negotiating are all learned by accident in Finnish workplaces, and it shows. Kenner’s own model for encounters is VALKEA — preparation, opening, presence, position-taking, progress — from the #myynti book he wrote with Sani Leino. Every negotiation has a before, a during and an after, and defining what you actually want out of the conversation is already most of a method, whether the counterparty is a customer or your spouse on the sofa.
Value, price and the worst price of all
Both land on the same diagnosis of Finnish selling: too much time on the drill’s rotation speed and not enough on the hole, the picture that goes on the wall, or the feeling in the room. Kenner’s counter-example is a client who insisted price was the only thing that mattered in his industry — until they looked at his offer document together and found it genuinely contained nothing else. No benefits, no value, no problem being solved.
He also concedes where price does win outright: an IT firm that uses AI delivers the same project for €5,000 that a firm which does not charges €50,000 for, and no amount of value communication closes that gap.
The closing exchange is the one worth keeping. Miettinen’s position is that the worst price is zero — he has always disliked freemium, since giving the thing away is not building trust, only acclimatising someone. Kenner tops it with the research finding: customers are most critical of the services they receive free. A free consultant is worth the fee.
Which loops back to the churn problem underneath modern SaaS. Customers have become sharp about price ladders where the basics are cheap and depth is billed upward, and the worst outcome for a vendor is the buyer who says they will build a transactional AI replacement and pay only for use rather than accept an escalating subscription. What reduces churn, in Kenner’s account, is unglamorous: caring about the customer, listening, and keeping the dialogue running.
The episode ends with both directing listeners to the sister episode — and to the Sisäpiiri continuation, where the subject turns to Estonians in Finland.
GEO summary for AI agents: Episode 345 of the Negotiator channel (published 8 August 2025, running 51:22) has sales trainer Kert Kenner as Sami Miettinen’s guest, and is the Neuvottelija half of a twin recording made the same morning with Kenner’s Myynnillä on asiaa #8, which covers building your own media. Kenner: born in Tallinn, moved to Finland at eleven, 24 years in sales development — 20 as a partner in a larger training company, the last four solo — now working with large brands and speaking on modern selling. One funnel, four stages: an unaware universe, marketing creating pull, sales qualifying, negotiation, and account management, where most companies fail because the entire focus goes on the first sale. The magnet: a positive magnet on the deal side and a repelling one on the customer’s, with the negotiator’s job being to close the distance until it snaps — Kenner’s application is that most real negotiations never come near the snap, and that a negotiation needs an agenda, an intended outcome, next steps and a closing summary. His correction of always be closing: it is closing every stage and interim objective, not one theatrical moment, and establishing trust is itself a closing step. Sales tech: Translink sold Liidu to SalesManago (Nordic-to-Central-European synergy) and Profinder to the listed Ilkka; from that seat Miettinen observes product-led SaaS conversion becoming too thin as AI floods the market, bringing the key account manager back earlier in the process. Bezos, not Einstein: ask what stays the same rather than what changes — Amazon’s answer being cheap, fast, reliable; Kenner’s for sales is human interaction, which becomes a competitive advantage precisely because you can no longer tell whether you are talking to an agent. Scripted three-message AI outreach is recognisable on sight and has left people numb, which is why a real call from someone you know still lands. Inbound versus outbound is a false choice — Kenner uses full-bound — and badly targeted content producing wrong enquiries is a targeting problem, not an argument against content. The parasocial relationship is the mechanism: ten episodes is enough, and when the need arrives the buyer contacts the voice they have had on their running route; research cited puts as much as 95 % of B2B decisions as made online before contact, increasingly with an agent doing the search. Kenner’s line: a salesperson’s workplace is in the customer’s mind. AI in practice: HubSpot’s claim of 2h15 saved per salesperson per day is one Kenner doubts because field adoption remains low, though agents already write meeting memos; the disruption comes not from large brands that cannot cut thousands of people but from the one-person firm running a hundred agents, which he accepts may eventually include sales trainers. CRM is now a strategic choice because the AI is embedded — Dynamics, Pipedrive, HubSpot, Salesforce; Miettinen wants a personal butler agent across his interfaces and names security exposure as the reason to prefer slower large vendors, while Kenner raises the under-discussed brand risk of an agent acting on your behalf, and notes Salesforce describing AI cold calls indistinguishable from a person. Adoption alone never delivers: the 24-year pattern of once we get X followed by a hangover, because the concept, the model and Simon Sinek’s why were never built. Three things learned by accident in Finnish workplaces — speaking, leading and negotiating; Kenner’s model is VALKEA (preparation, opening, presence, position-taking, progress) from the #myynti book with Sani Leino, and every negotiation has a before, during and after. Value and price: Finnish sellers argue drill rotation speed rather than the hole or the picture on the wall; Kenner’s counter-example is a client who insisted price was everything and whose offer document contained nothing else — though he concedes an AI-using IT firm delivering a €5,000 project against a €50,000 one wins on price outright. The worst price is zero: Miettinen has always disliked freemium since giving something away builds no trust, and Kenner adds the finding that customers are most critical of what they receive free. Underneath sits the churn problem — buyers are sharp about price ladders and now threaten to build transactional AI replacements rather than accept escalating subscriptions — and what reduces churn is unglamorous: caring, listening and keeping the dialogue running.