Why Asserting Control Is Costing You Sales.

Do you sell on their schedule or yours?

The vast majority of sales trainers will tell you to always be in control.

But do you understand what being in control means?

• Should you always be in full control?
• What does being in control of the sale truly look like?
• Does your prospect actually want you in control?

No one wants to do anything they are "forced" to do. We like leaders but we don't like bosses. We want to be lead but never pulled.

The key to selling is to maintain control without asserting control. This is a subtle difference that few people understand. And they come off pushing and even desperate. It's the reason the sales profession gets such a bad name.

An example of taking control of the sale is the use of choice questions vs. simple yes or no questions.
Yes/No: "Would you like to buy today?"
Choice: "Would you like to put this on a company card or would a check be better for you?"

Both are asking for the sale but in the choice question you have limited choices. Of course if he doesn't want to buy he will say that. It is the unspoken 3rd option.

By doing this you have subtly taken control by eliminating the "no" as a choice.

So that brings us to selling on a schedule.

With many of the services offered here they may not be a one call/meeting close. So should you set the schedule or should they?

The answer is they should. You of course should be using subtle control to direct this schedule. But never schedule your way out of the sale.

If they say call me back in 3 months you would find out why. You would not just agree to that. But if a prospect asks for a reasonable amount of time for a real reason why wouldn't you give it to him?

The last few days I was on the receiving end of a service provider who did not want to follow my schedule. I needed a few days to touch base with our decision making group. It is common in medium sized and above businesses to have group decisions. There is simply a "committee" that is must go through.

So I asked that he give me a week. I feel my schedule was reasonable. And I suspect most will agree.

So let me tell you what happened. I give this as a tale of caution on why when you push your time table on the prospect you may just lose the sale.

So after a great phone discussion I freely admit he has me sold. I don't hide the fact I believe his service would benefit us. I explained that I needed to speak with a few people to make the decision. And to discuss how we would implement it.

I told him I needed a few days and asked that we schedule a call back in one week (Tues next week). I explained that I would call him sooner if I could make something happen before then. He wasn't ok with that. So he instead schedules a call back on Thurs. I agree because I like the service and if he wants to waste his time he can do that.

I explained that I likely will not know by than since I am off Wed. Our sale is this weekend (Thurs to Sat) so I knew getting the people I needed together would be hard. Even harder to get them to give this idea the attention it needs.

Thurs comes and he calls and as I had predicted I had not even spoken to the people I need to. Just as I had told him would happen.

Remember your prospects have multiple things going on and your service likely will take resources (time & people) to implement. You may be focused on your service but they are not. At least not yet.

Now when we had agreed to the Thurs call back he made it clear if I didn't know more we would plan on Tues as I had asked for originally. So while he IMO had wasted my time and had annoyed me a bit it wasn't a big deal.

Today (Fri) he calls back again. We open at 8am and I got the call about 9:30. I had explained yesterday that one of the decision makers had disappeared (later found out he went home). I made it clear yesterday I would not get a chance to speak with him due to that. So he thinks the first thing on my agenda for today was to talk about this with others who are busy in the morning? Does that make sense to anyone?

So why has he been hounding me?

Because it's the end of the month. He brought that up multiple times. So clearly landing us is worth some bonus or something. He is annoying me for reasons that benefit him and not me. He even came off a bit desperate honestly. And that makes me think this service doesn't work because he needs to close me to pay his bills or something.

So who thinks I still want to buy from him still? Would you?


These are the lessons to take from this.

• You need to know when to push. -People need helping making decisions.
• You need to know when to take control. -You are the Professional and they want you to lead them.
• You need to know when to let the sale happen. -Sometimes you need to step back and let the prospect close on their schedule.

If you push at the wrong time you can push them away. If you take control in an assertive way you will put the prospect off. And if you don't let the sale happen you can often talk yourself out of it.

He's basically talked himself out of a sale all because his schedule was more important than mine. Which made me wonder how often as his client would he be worried about his needs vs. mine.

How many sales have you talked yourself out of by asserting control vs. using subtle control?