The popular advice goes like this: walk into the sales call with a good heart and an open agenda. Ask "What do you need?" Then listen. And listen.

It feels like service. Then the deal stalls, and the seller ends up chasing a yes they should have been leading to.

I see it the other way around. When you are in control of the conversation, you serve the buyer 100%.

I talked this through with Larry Levine and Darrell Amy on Selling From the Heart (September 2026). Listen to the full conversation: Process Builds Trust on Selling From the Heart

Selling means helping the other person make progress

That's the core. Almost everyone agrees with it.

Here's where it splits. The opposite of control isn't service. It's sloppy preparation. Showing up underprepared, over-open, hoping the call finds its own shape.

And an underprepared seller usually has a semi-dry pipeline, because an unrepeatable process doesn't fill one. So the seller comes in hungry and pushes to close. Now they're serving themselves, not the buyer.

Control flips that. You come with a plan, so the conversation can be about their progress instead of your quota.

The plan doesn't need to be fancy. It needs to be one process you run every time. Ours is the 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale, in the same order, every call.

What a rowing coach taught me about control

🐬 When I'm not working, I row. Our coach never walks in and asks, "guys, what do you want to do?"

He says: we are 16 days before the regatta. Today is 60 minutes. Seven kilometers, push-ups in between. Control your breath, stay in your lane, stay in sync, and try to win.

Then he rides a bike along the river next to the boat and gives feedback in real time. Relax the shoulders. Push with the legs. Don't go solo.

It's harsh. And we follow it, because it comes from reality. He wins regattas.

For my first ten years as a sales coach, I did the opposite. I asked teams where the bottleneck was, then listened and listened, thinking that was service. The intention was right. The preparation wasn't. A bitter lesson, and a useful one.

Today every session has an agenda. Five minutes on a LinkedIn conversion problem: load the bar, do the reps. Ten minutes on pricing: load the bar, do the reps. Even the hot seat is structured, one problem solved together.

Preparation is how buyers decide to trust you

For one hour of a sales conversation, I like to prepare three. A researched plan, after being immersed in the buyer's industry and world.

Why? Because I only offer my services if I know something they don't, or have something they need. Preparation is how I find out.

Buyers feel the difference in a millisecond. Do I trust this person? Do I follow them?

That question matters more every month. AI can now produce a pricing strategy or a go-to-market concept almost as well as a consultant, if you use it properly. But that's the plan. There's still the execution, Monday to Friday. And people don't follow a machine through resistance. They follow a person they trust.

"Trust will be the key differentiator in the age of AI."

Darrell added something on the show that stuck with me. Trust has two sides: the relationship and the value. Part of the value is the process you lead the buyer through. And in the companies Larry and Darrell assess, sales process scores near the bottom almost every time.

Write the process down before you add AI

🐯 This is where I see founders lose the most time right now.

A team asks us for AI sales acceleration. We hand over our processes. A week later: chaos. Many things started, none finished.

The reason is always the same. Nobody ever wrote down how they run the first conversation, the follow-up, the upsell, the activation after signing.

"What you want is AI. What you need is writing down the process first."

Otherwise "the AI will only scale chaos."

So map it. Think of your sales process like a refinery. Objects (a prospect, a deal, a doc, a call, an email) move through actions (talking, writing, signing). With today's tools you can map it in a few hours.

Then simplify. Sell one thing. You may have 17 products, but they probably solve one big cluster of problems. Lead with that one outcome and modularize it in the statement of work.

Establish contact before you push

Picture pushing a car that won't start. Push too early and you burn energy while nothing moves. First you make contact, align your whole body with the car, then push harder and harder until it rolls.

Prospects are the same. Before you push, check three things: right person, right reason, right time. Most messages go out with none of the three.

"I saw you on LinkedIn, let's talk." That's slop. It tells a busy founder you didn't take the time to think about them. Templated messages go stale on arrival. Multiply it across a team of five and you're burning a reputation it took 20 years to build.

The one change to make this week

If I could give a sales leader one thing, it's this: cut your messages by ten.

"Instead of sending 200 things, let's send 20 this week. But let's go deeper."

Deeper means: what's coming for them, what do they want, what's the gap, how can you help close it. The research part is now fast with the right agents doing the heavy lifting. The attention is still yours.

🌴 Then make the message human. A founder's inbox is full of templated, hyper-formal messages. Give them a moment of lightness instead. I send dolphins and cheetahs.

Send fewer messages. Make them more interesting. Make them about who you are and what you can do for them.

That's control. And that's service. The buyer feels led, you stop chasing, and the yes comes on your timeline.

Listen to the full conversation with Larry Levine and Darrell Amy: Selling From the Heart with Simon Severino

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Happy hunting.
Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆