Sellers: Are You A Control Freak, or A Puppet On A String?

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Balancing Leadership With Control In The Sales Cycle

Is Control All That It Claims To Be?

You say taking control or the illusion of control can be ‘dangerous’- why is that? Well, here are a number of reasons:

1. It May Be Resisted

Every situation is different and some buyers want to be led by the hand by the salesperson. They want the salesperson to take control and to show the way. However that is increasingly rare.

Most buyers don’t want to be controlled, manipulated or closed! When it comes to the characteristics of salespeople that buyers they don’t want to buy from, or even meet, pushiness tops the list.

The salesperson who wants to be seen as a trusted adviser needs to take care not to be seen as attempting to take control.

2. It May Be Futile

Is so much talk about trying to take control really an admission that the seller is not in control?

Trying to corral the buyer along the seller’s process may be futile, even dangerous. Where a rigid buying process is mandated, the buyer cannot skip a step.

Attempts by the seller to circumvent the buyer’s process could result in disqualification. It could even result in a reset of the buying process, or a stalled deal.

3. It Can Limit Engagement

The ultimate prize for any salesperson selling to the modern buyer is engagement, not control. But access to senior level decision makers is becoming more restricted.

Managers are choosing to see fewer salespeople. You only get access by helping the buyer – by being a trusted adviser – not by being a ‘control freak’.

If selling is the battle for hearths and minds, then engagement rather than control is the primary strategy for success.

Unless the buyer has been involved in arriving at the solution and building the rational for the decision he, or she is less likely to be committed to it. That is called the IKEA effect. The lesson for the seller is that unless the buyer is involved in building it, he or she won’t care for it as much.

4. It Could Make You A Less Effective Negotiator

Research at INSEAD for example shows that letting go of the need to control enables people to better see the other person’s perspective and boost negotiation success – you can find links to that research here.

Similarly psychological research at Stanford shows that where salespeople feel they have power, they are more likely to exhibit socially dis-inhibited behavior, such as dis-honesty.

So, isn’t it time to take a more sophisticated view of control?