Matt Ryder explains that desperation on sales calls stems from a salesperson appearing "thirsty" rather than from the script. He advises adopting a "leaned out" mindset—accepting that you cannot control the prospect, following a reliable sales process, and remaining unemotional (illustrated with metaphors like car salespeople, a bar encounter, and sniper shooting).
What makes a sales call feel desperate has nothing to do with the script. It's actually just to do with, like, how thirsty the sales rep is. You probably walked into a car yard and like, the dude, like, runs up to you and he's, what are you doing? And he's all crazy. Or if you're an attractive chick and you've been to a bar and some dude's just sleezing on you, the fact that he is or that person wants you so badly is kind of what turns you off. And so the sales rep needs to be like, leaned out. I think what everybody gets wrong about this is where it's like they don't care about the person. It's like, no, you've just done enough sales to where you realize that you can't actually control what they do, what they say. So you're leaned out. And you know that if you just do your process, your process will work the amount of times that it is supposed to work. And so if you understand that you can't really do much to make them buy, then you can sit back and just be diligent about your process. It's like when I was a sniper and I used to go shooting, if a giant gust of wind came by and blew the bullet off track, like, I didn't punch myself in the face and tell myself that I had a bad mindset. I was like, oh, that was a gust of wind. There's no amount of training or anything I can do to counteract a random gust. And so I can sit back and I can be unemotional about it, because what will happen as long as I do my thing that I'm in the best position to be able to win?
