Jul 1, 2026
For celebrity investor Robert Herjavec, a successful deal is all about the subconscious. But he doesn’t mean you have to use mind tricks to manipulate your customers. Quite the contrary: Herjavec says your focus should always be about offering genuine help.
In a recent Instagram post, the “Shark Tank” star wrote that his “whole trick” for closing “million dollar contracts” was that people “never felt like they were being sold to.”
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Robert Herjavec elaborated on his mindset in an Instagram post. First, he criticized the common sales advice that, “Once you know what the opportunity is, go and close it.”
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For Herjavec, that’s seriously messing with your customer’s subconscious mind. Instead of lending a hand when someone’s asking for help, chasing the close shows them you don’t really care.
Herjavec warned that if you’re too laser-eyed on making sales, you risk creating a psychic “conflict” where the client thinks, “Hey, I just opened up to you, and now you’re trying to take advantage of me. You saw my vulnerability, and you’re using that as an opportunity to sell. I thought you were here to help me.”
To avoid creating this inner tension, Herjavec stressed the importance of listening and offering something that’s of genuine value. As he put it, “You always want to close from a position of helping, not selling.”
Is “helping first” just a feel-good sales pitch?
All of Herjavec’s ideas sound nice, but they seem to go against the popular image of a cutthroat negotiator. After all, “sharks” aren’t known to be the friendliest of creatures. When they smell blood, they don’t try to heal a wound.
So, do all these compassionate notions Herjavec talks about have a place in the real world of sales?
Interestingly, data from HubSpot’s 2025 State of Sales Report suggests Herjavec’s advice is spot on.
According to sales reps in this survey, 42% cited understanding customer goals as a major reason for repeat sales and upsells. Another key driver for these higher sales figures was “building trust” at 30%.
When HubSpot looked more closely at what made the top salespeople so successful, they found it mostly came down to soft skills and emotional intelligence. Particularly, researchers reported that 40% of their respondents identified building trust and rapport as their “most effective upsell/cross-sell strategy.”
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Helping doesn’t look like a sales pitch, which is probably why it’s so effective. Salespeople that get what Herjavec’s saying are far more focused on figuring out the problem than rushing to a solution. As Herjavec wrote on Instagram, “When you care more about their outcome than your commission, the sale takes care of itself.”
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Soft skills may be the strongest advantage
You don’t have to work in sales to get a lot of value out of Herjavec’s truth bombs. In fact, the emphasis on people skills like listening and building trust could be the biggest differentiators in a world awash with automation.
After all, technical tools are easier than ever to find with AI. While fluency with prompting might help get someone in the door, it’s the human skills like curiosity and empathy that will likely keep that door wide open for new opportunities.
In Herjavec’s mind, “helping” isn’t just a sneaky way to sell. When you put the needs of others first and earn their confidence with genuine improvements, you’re well on the path to creating a “win-win” scenario that lasts for years or decades.
At the end of Herjavec’s post, he stressed the significance of building these solid relationships, saying, “Your most valuable thing is the partnership and the trust of your customer, and so you always, always want to build on that.”
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Eric Esposito is a freelance contributor on MoneyWise who loves making financial topics accessible and understandable to readers. In addition to MoneyWise, Eric’s work can be found in publications such as WallStreetZen and CoinDesk.
