It’s Okay to Want a Deal. It’s Not Okay to Need One.

It’s okay to want a deal. It’s not okay to need a deal.

If you need a deal, then you won’t qualify your prospective client. You’ll choose something less than your dream client, the prospective client for whom you can create breath-taking, earth-shattering, jaw-dropping results. If you need a deal, even a nightmare client starts to look a dream client.

You don’t sell well when you need a deal either. You ignore the sales process that guides you successfully from target to close and take shortcuts instead. To get to that deal, you have to pitch. So you skip ahead and make the ask before you’ve created enough value to have earned it.

When it comes to negotiating, forget about it. If you are lucky enough to find your way to a possible deal, your desperate need for a deal eliminates your ability to negotiate (not that you would have done enough value creating to deserve to capture any in the first place).

But the root cause for “needing” a deal is always the same: You didn’t prospect when you needed to. There is only one thing that inoculates you from needing a deal and that’s a healthy pipeline of opportunities. You sell better, you sell more effectively, and you create more value as a salesperson when you don’t “need” a deal.

When you don’t “need” a deal, you’re more confident. That confidence is what allows you to “want” a deal, to tell your dream client that you “want’ their business, and that you “want” to help them achieve the outcomes you sell. “Needing” a deal makes you desperate, and desperation is no way to win a deal.

Questions

What’s the difference between “wanting” and “needing” a deal?

Why do you “need” a deal?

Why is desperation a horrible place from which to sell?

How does the confidence of not “needing” a deal help your sales performance?