What You Cannot Control and What You Can

Post by Anthony Iannarino
April 16, 2010

You cannot control when and whether you dream clients are dissatisfied enough to consider your offer.

You can control how much time you spend prospecting.

You can control whether or not you have an effective plan for nurturing relationships over time.

You can control how your dream clients think of you when they have a problem that you can solve with them.

You can control whether or not your offering can create a great result and create a gap between where they are and where they might be.

You cannot control whether or not your dream client picks up the telephone when you call.

You can control whether or not you call back.

You can control how often you try to call.

You can control whether or not you have something to say that is worth listening to when they answer the telephone.

You can control whether or not you ask for the appointment.

You cannot control the outcome of the sales call.

You can control whether or not you open the call well and make advancing the sale easier.

You can control whether or not you waste your dream client’s time.

You can control whether or not you ask for a commitment to move forward.

You can control whether or not you make the call enough of a valuable interaction for your dream client that it increases their willingness to meet again.

You cannot control the information that a dream client shares with you during a sales call.

You can control whether or not you have an extraordinary set of questions that are designed to create an understanding.

You can control whether or not you develop relationships deep enough within the organization to understand the ground truth.

You can control whether or not you continue to seek the answers and information that will allow you to compete and to create something meaningful.

You can control whether or not you continue to seek the truth.

You cannot control the questions, objections, and concerns your dream client may have.

You can prepare responses to the common questions, objections, and concerns that your dream clients have expressed in the past.

You can decide whether or not to respond to questions for which you don’t have an answer and to ask for time to get the right answer.

You can decide whether or not to have the subject matter experts from your team available to help with those answers when you meet with your dream clients.

You cannot control your competitors.

You can control whether or not you follow your competitors into commoditization or whether you differentiate yourself and your offering by behaving differently and creating value.

You can control whether or not you create enough value to not sell on price alone.

You can control whether or not you can make the case that there is a difference between price and cost.

You can control which dream clients you spend your time pursuing.

You cannot control whether or not your dream client buys from you.

You can control whether or not you are a person worth buying from.

You can control whether or not all of your interactions with your dream client make it easy for them to choose you over your competitors.

You can control whether or not you are someone who creates value for her dream clients on every interaction.

You can control whether or not you are perceived as possessing the business acumen necessary to be trusted with your dream client’s biggest problems.

You can control whether or not you ask if you have created enough value to move forward with your dream client.

You can control whether or not you have created a compelling vision of better future and how that outcome can be achieved.

You can control whether or not your provide the evidence necessary to prove that you can both achieve the outcomes that you sell and that will in fact make sure that they are achieved.

You can control whether or not you ask for their business.

Conclusion

Much of what we encounter in sales is out of our control. But we can exercise control over ourselves, our behaviors, and our actions to make what is out of our control more likely to result in a deal.