You walk out of a sales call and replay it. You lectured the buyer, or you nodded along and agreed to send a proposal you never wanted to send. The pattern is older than your career.

This week we work through transactional analysis, the concept underneath most Sandler techniques. Every conversation runs between three ego states: parent, adult, and child. Selling gets done adult to adult, and most salespeople default to one of the other two without noticing.

What the three ego states sound like on a sales call

The parent comes in two versions. The critical parent wags a finger ("that is not what you should have done"), and the nurturing parent soothes. The adult is calm, fact based, and curious, and asks questions like "what would have to happen for this to make sense?" The child shows up as the free child with giddy excitement, the adapted child full of mother-may-I filler phrases, and the little professor, the clever, sarcastic one who reads the room and sometimes attacks whatever someone is self-conscious about.

Why presentation mode backfires

Jim calls himself eminently qualified to talk about the critical parent: both of his parents were critical, and he got a double dose. Presenting puts the seller at the front of the room like a school teacher, telling the buyer what to do. Nobody wants to be sold, but most people need help buying. Underneath the presentation, the seller sits in the child, saying look at me, look what I can do for you.

Why your siblings would recognize you on a sales call

The ego states you lived in growing up become the scripts that run your calls today. People with siblings learned how these dynamics play out between peers, not only with parents and bosses. Play a recording of your last sales conversation for a brother or sister, and they would say, "yeah, that is you."

What a crossed transaction is

Every exchange is a transaction. A parent asks, a compliant child agrees, and nothing breaks. When the child starts negotiating instead, the transaction crosses, and the parent ends up throwing the fit. Drama lives in crossed transactions, and drama exists to avoid responsibility.

Where to start

Look up transactional analysis, then watch how you show up at your next networking meeting. Jim walks through his own networking default and why a clique of familiar faces is the child seeking safety. You own 100 percent of you. Once you know your default ego state, you can adjust it, and you stop trying to fix the buyer.

If this resonated, check out The Show-and-Tell Habit That Ends in "Send Me a Proposal," where we cover what happens when a seller goes into presentation mode on autopilot.

The Sandler Training Hour Hosted by Jim & Jason Stephens | Crossroads Business Development

Join hosts Jim and Jason Stephens from Crossroads Business Development as they discuss techniques, tactics, and the occasional tangent associated with the Sandler Selling System. Whether you are prospecting, negotiating, or closing, The Sandler Training Hour gives you the actionable advice you need to stop "winging it" and start controlling the sale.

📧 Reach out: jason.stephens@sandler.com 🌐 Crossroads Business Development