It's funny to me that the idea of "control" can become such a negative idea that it is almost politically incorrect to think it's a good thing. Sure, you can take anything too far, and a person who is considered a "control freak" is not someone we might want to hang out with. However, in sales, the most successful sales professionals are the ones who try to control as many variables as possible. A recent post referred to just one out of many ways to try to control a situation we come across in sales. We often think about things like: how will we answer a certain question; who will sit where in a meeting; how can we avoid meeting with a certain person; how can we leverage relationships to elevate our access...

In reality, in sales it's best to try to control all of the things that can go wrong in a sales cycle. We will never gain full and complete control, but we will improve our odds of winning.