Dearest Reader,

I was 10 minutes late to a sales call this week.

And not the “oops, my Zoom wouldn’t load or the calendar invite disappeared into the digital void” late.

It was in my calendar. I had the reminder.

And then I got distracted on another call, lost track of time, and showed up 10 minutes late. Which is bad enough on its own. But because the universe has a flair for theatrics, the prospect couldn’t find the Zoom link or calendar invite because my auto-reminders and pre-sales call email hadn’t landed in their inbox the way they were supposed to.

So not only was I late, the entire experience around the call was...well, f*cked. A real chef’s kiss of professional humiliation.

And I wanted to explain myself.

Ohhhh, did I want to explain myself.

I wanted them to know I was coming off a back-to-back marathon of calls during a week where I was solo parenting, while also trying to hold thoughts in my brain that perimenopause seems hell bent on stealing from me.

I wanted to say, “This isn’t how I operate, I’m actually very organized. Please know there is context here, and that context includes logistics, hormones, exhaustion, and the general administrative violence of modern life.”

But I didn’t. I apologized like I meant it, because I did. And then I shut up. Because sometimes sales means having egg on our face so our prospect doesn’t have to.

She didn’t do anything wrong, I messed up. But the second I started explaining myself, the conversation would have stopped being about the experience she had and started being about my desire to be understood.

This is why sales can be hard. Because selling requires ego.

I know we love to talk about “parking your ego” like the goal is to become some fully detached, floating cloud of grace and emotional neutrality.

But, like, f*ck that. We need ego to sell. We need enough ego to put ourselves out there. To send the message and make the ask and follow up. To state our price without immediately developing a respiratory condition, to hear “no” without deciding our business is fake and we should probably go live under a bridge.

Ego gets us into the room. It helps us tolerate the discomfort of being visible. It lets us advocate for our work/product/ideas/buyer, and the outcome we believe is possible.

But once we’re in that room we better park that ego, because when we let her drive...we over-explain. Defend ourselves. Talk too much. Mistake silence for rejection. Try to “handle” objections that are actually the buyer telling us the truth. Push for urgency because we feel urgent. Follow up with resentment disguised as helpfulness. Turn every delay, hesitation, or “let me think about it” into a referendum on our worth, our offer, our intelligence, our pricing, our childhood, our cheekbones...

This is why a lot of what people call “sales skill” is actually emotional regulation.

Can we be rejected without retaliating,

be misunderstood without launching a one-woman courtroom drama about our intentions,

hear an objection without immediately trying to debate it into submission?

Can we accept that sometimes our prospect isn’t ready to face reality without making it our job to drag them there by the ankles and apologize without auditioning for the role of Very Good Person Who Had Valid Reasons?

That’s what it takes.

And it’s hard because sometimes the same ego that helps us push through discomfort is the ego that makes us want relief from it.

The part of us that says, “Send the message,” is very close to the part of us that says, “Now make sure they know you’re smart, competent, well-intentioned, organized, professional, and definitely not the kind of person who forgets a sales call.”

Which is annoying, but it's also why we build self trust and discernment.

When is my ego helping me be brave? And when is it making this interaction about me?

Good selling lives in that difference.

It lives in the pause between the thing we want to say and the thing that actually serves the conversation.

the moment we choose not to make our prospect responsible for our discomfort. and listen.

I’m not suggesting we suppress every human impulse until we become dead-eyed little pipeline goblins with Calendly links.

I'm saying sales will regularly confront us with moments where our ego wants relief more than our buyer needs explanation.

And in those moments, the work is not to disappear. It’s to stay present, take responsibility, and let the buyer have their own experience.

Sometimes that means apologizing and shutting our trap, accepting an objection without trying to outwit it, or letting someone not be ready.

Sometimes it means remembering that our job isn't to be liked, forgiven, validated, or immediately understood.

Our job is to sell in a way that preserves trust even when it costs us a little pride.

Especially then.

Because anyone can be polished when everything goes well. The Real MVPs are zen when shit’s hitting the fan. That’s when you find out whether you’re selling from strength panic.

FWIW, I'd prefer to learn this lesson in a way that does not involve being late to a sales call.

But apparently the universe had other plans.

Rude, but noted.

Until next week, happy selling!

Talica

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