What Sales/Customer-Facing Professionals Can Learn from Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Sales and customer-facing professionals work inside a structural tension every day: their income depends on closing deals, while their customers depend on getting honest guidance about what they actually need. Caitlin Doughty's Smoke Gets in Your Eyes exposes exactly this tension inside the funeral industry, where grieving families rely on professionals who are also trying to sell them something, and shows how easily upselling can happen even to a well-meaning employee. For anyone in sales, that account is less a story about death and more a mirror held up to any commission-driven interaction, where the line between serving the customer and serving the quota can blur without anyone intending it to, especially under pressure to close before the end of the quarter.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The showroom trained to move people through fast
Just as funeral homes are structured to move grieving families through decisions quickly before they can compare options, many sales environments are structured to move customers through a pipeline fast, minimizing the time they have to ask hard questions or shop around.
A salesperson leans on urgency language, limited-time offers, last unit available, to shorten a customer's decision window rather than genuinely serving their timeline.
This week, in one sales conversation, deliberately slow the pace and invite the customer to ask more questions before you move toward close.
Direct honesty builds more durable trust than a polished pitch
Doughty found that families who understood their actual options, rather than being guided smoothly toward the default package, ended up more satisfied and less resentful afterward. Customers who are told plainly what they do and do not need tend to become repeat customers and referrals, even when the immediate sale is smaller.
Salespeople default to a scripted pitch that emphasizes upgrades and add-ons because it is trained and rewarded, even when a simpler option would serve the customer better.
The next time an upsell opportunity arises, name the lower-cost option out loud first and let the customer choose from there.
Your incentive structure is not automatically the customer's friend
Doughty shows plainly how funeral homes can steer grieving, inexperienced families toward decisions that serve the business more than the family. Commission structures, sales targets, and manager pressure operate the same way, quietly shaping what gets recommended regardless of customer need.
A salesperson assumes that because a recommendation is within policy, it is automatically in the customer's best interest, without checking that assumption.
Pick one product or package you sell often and write down, honestly, who it actually benefits most, the customer or your quota.
Memento mori as a check on the sales instinct
Doughty frames regular awareness of mortality, memento mori, as a habit that clarifies present priorities rather than a bleak indulgence. For a salesperson, a version of that awareness might be a regular gut check on what kind of business relationship they actually want to be remembered for. Keeping that awareness present tends to produce steadier long-term trust with customers than chasing every short-term close.
The push for honest, unhurried customer guidance can genuinely conflict with real quota pressure and a job that depends on closing deals. The answer is not pretending the tension does not exist, but being deliberate about where you draw the line, and treating a customer's trust as worth more over time than any single sale.
Name one thing, honestly
- Where has urgency language in your sales process served your close more than the customer's actual timeline? - What product or package do you sell that mainly benefits your quota rather than the buyer? - What would change in your approach if every customer remembered how you handled this decision?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Pick one product or package you sell often and write down, honestly, who it actually benefits most, the customer or your quota.