Selling and the Delusion of Control

Don't kid yourself about controlling your customers.

How much control you do maintain over your prospects during a sales cycle?

If your answer is ‘a lot,’ I have a bone to pick with you. At best you’re deluded. At worst you’re a control freak.  In either case you’re probably working against your own best interests.

Let that harsh judgment forewarn you that you’re about to read a short rant.

Sales trainers and managers often say you must maintain control over your sales process. Control the agenda, they say. Control the meeting. Control the conversation. Control the demo.

I disagree. You can negotiate those things, but you can’t control them. A negotiation is a process to achieve an agreement that all parties have the right to veto.

Don’t Kid Yourself

Face it. You are never in control of either the prospect’s decision process or the factors that affect it.

If you have ever doubted this, how can you do so in the middle of a deep recession?

• Decision makers disappear.
• Companies suddenly go bankrupt, merge and get acquired.
• Customer priorities change.
• Credit tightens.
• Entire industries are decimated.
• Markets evaporate.
• Currency translation rates make your pricing uncompetitive.
• Entire national economies lose momentum.

Even in a strong economy, dozens of factors can show you in a moment that you don’t have the level of control you may like to think you do:

• Natural disasters strike.
• Terrorists grab headlines.
• Countries go to war.
• Competitors catch you off balance.
• Your strongest supporters and references abruptly move to other companies, retire, go on health leave, change industry, or even die.
• Your product or delivery channels develop problems.

Your best efforts can always be derailed in a sales process. In fact, you are never in control of anything but yourself.

Concentrate on What You Can Control

For your own mental health and effectiveness, accept it. But don’t lurch to the extreme of thinking everything is beyond of your control.

Focus instead on what you should be thinking…what else you could be doing…what more you need to know…what questions you should be asking…what skills you need to acquire or sharpen…how you might change the way you interact with your prospects…what help you can enlist from your teammates, coaches and friends.

These are things you can and must control. Stop obsessing about everything else. Focus your efforts where they can accomplish some good results.

Stay fresh.

– Scott Silverback