“I’ll show him; I won’t call him back!”

“I don’t need his business. There are plenty more where he came from.”

“Maybe he can thin other people’s margins, but not mine!”

“I’m going to quote just one price and he can take it or leave it.”

These are just a few of the lines self-defeating salesmen use to rationalize their often bizarre behavior.

They just can’t seem to get out of their own way when they’re selling.

Instead of making customers feel important, they pull out every stop to come across as superior, citing all of their irrelevant achievements and credentials.

I interviewed a fellow whose resume mentioned prominently that he went to an Ivy League school. When we talked about a sales position he said: “Please don’t tell anyone, because I wouldn’t want it to get back to them that this is what I’m doing now, for a living!”

I think this is a very revealing case study in ambivalence, which is one of the major maladies of the self-defeating salesman. He’s not at all sure selling is what he wants to do for a living.

It could have been his second or fifty-second choice as an occupation, but he fell into doing it and his lifestyle or indebtedness or inertia won’t permit him to make a change.

One of the manifestations of a self-defeating salesman is that he talks too much, rambles, and finally says something offensive that ruins the deal.

Jim was trying to sell a training program to two owners of a home security company. One of them asked, at a crucial stage in the conversation, “What’s the next step?”

Instead of saying, “All I need is your go ahead and we’ll be able to begin next week, okay?” Jim tossed the ball back to the buyers.

“Well, I guess you gentlemen need to decide whether you want to move forward,” he replied, limply.

“Right,” one of them retorted. “We’ll discuss it and get back to you,” which of course was their last intention.

If Jim couldn’t CLOSE them, especially when cued to do so, what was he going to teach their salespeople, whom he sought to train?

Jim knew better, but for some reason, he felt the buyers were toying with him, testing him, and he resented it. So, instead of giving them what they wanted, he shot himself in the foot.

One of my clients, a very successful salesman and entrepreneur, remarked that “Selling is so easy; it’s hard.”

I think he meant it’s hard not to get in your own way, which is exactly what happens all too often to salesmen who don’t straighten out their priorities and stay out of their own way.