#5 of 8 Surprising Habits That Block Your Influence

Have you heard the saying Selling Past the Close? That’s Habit #5 of the 8 Surprising Habits that Hamstring Your Influence and I am so guilty of this! Selling Past the Close means the people have already said yes, or they agree, or they “bought in” to what you’re saying. 

When there is something I feel is so important, I get so worked up and passionate about it, I have the tendency to keep talking or overexplaining why it’s so important. I mostly do this on the home front and Ivan is so funny because he’ll make this crazy horse sound, and say, “Okay…the horse is dead.”  As in, stop kicking a dead horse.  Not a great saying, though I get the point.

If you’ve got this habit, you are actually starting to sound less confident, less convinced and you start to trigger some hesitation or doubt in the people around you.   

One of my favorite scenes in the movie Moneyball is when Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) is on speaker phone working to trade one of his players.

He says, “Alright, now can we say it’s done in theory and start drawing up the paperwork?” The guy on the other end says, “Ok…but you’re…” and Brad Pitt says, “Great, thanks” and CLICK, hangs up the phone. 

Jonah Hill, who plays Peter Brand, says “I think he was going to say something else.” Pitt says, “When you get the answer you’re looking for, hang up.”

I love that scene because I wish that I could pull it off, because I absolutely know that I have Habit #5 – Selling Past the Close. And, if you have this habit you’re actually working against yourself in terms of influencing outcomes and the performance of the people around you.

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