Your Inner Boardroom in Sales

My Tuesday email this week was all about how, in sales, a “no” isn’t a “no” until you’ve gotten an actual “no.” I gave a sample follow-up schedule and tips on how to get a potential client to a decision.

If you read that email and were like “sounds great!” but are having a figurative or actual anxiety attack at the thought of doing it: welcome to the emotional side of sales.

If you’re able to ignore those emotions and push through anyway, great. But you’re in the minority. You’ve likely already done it enough times to trust the process.

Let me show you what I mean.

Let’s say it’s time to send that first follow-up email. The comfortable thing would be to wait two weeks. You’re used to that and it doesn’t feel intrusive.

But you’ve learned that you should follow up more quickly and create a sense of urgency to manage your pipeline a bit better. Get to a quicker no.

In this case, it’s not logic you’re fighting against. Logically, you know what to do. You’re fighting against that Inner Boardroom. Those voices, or parts of you, that once were helpful but now you’re not so sure.

These parts of you are what most people let run the show:

• The Perfectionist reviewing every word you said, convinced you should have positioned it differently

• The Budgeter catastrophizing about what happens if they say no 

• The People Pleaser wanting to lower your price or add more value to make them happy

• The Skeptic convinced this person was never serious anyway

• The Strategist trying to calculate the “right” follow-up timing

• The Protector wanting you to just withdraw the offer before you can be rejected

So let’s flip it.

Maybe the Perfectionist is your Quality Control Manager. Are there times when getting the details right is critical? Yes. That’s when you bring them in. Otherwise, they shouldn’t run the show.

Maybe the Budgeter is your CFO, running worst-case scenarios and living in the worst—because that’s their job.

And maybe the Strategist is your Marketing Director, focused on optimizing every possible communication touchpoint.

These roles are all trying to help you improve.

But in moments of panic, they’re likely all speaking at once. And you don’t want any singular one of them making all the decisions. You want to take all their perspectives into consideration and have you, the CEO, hold the whole strategy.

That emotional intensity you feel around sending follow-up communications, cold outreach, or naming an uncomfortably high price in your calls? It’s not a sign that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s a sign that the stakes feel high and your department heads care. So put on your CEO hat, take a deep breath, and chair the meeting.

How to do that? Glad you asked.

1. Notice which boardroom members are loudest during different sales moments

2. Name what each one is trying to protect you from

3. Consciously decide which voice gets decision-making power in this moment

Like anything, sales (and paying attention to the inner boardroom) gets easier with practice.

Confidence tends to follow action, not precede it.