The Plan? Everybody Has a Plan…
WMMM #112- This week I share an example of something salespeople encounter almost daily.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter June 30, 2026 4 min read
The Beauty of Sales
Expect the unexpected.
So, how do we prepare for that?
When the unexpected happens, what do we do?
Seek the answer from our mentor?
Or, send a prompt to ChatGPT or Gemini: “Tell me what to do.”
Nope.
There is no “script” that works for every situation.
We cannot seek to have the answer for every question nor plan for every contingency.
We must train our minds to adapt to any circumstance.
Cultivate skills like creativity, independence, self-confidence, ingenuity, and the ability to problem-solve.
This week I share how this success tip was met with opposition recently.
Don’t Answer Unasked Questions
It was scheduled as a 30-minute introductory video conference.
The meeting was arranged by two nonparticipants through a relationship unrelated to the meeting.
The party helping with the introduction executed his role flawlessly.
He made the introductions with clarity and went into “listen-mode”.
He did not need to hear himself speak.
The meeting began with the typical credentialing.
An "upfront contract” technique was used to frame the time we had left.
Not too far into the “rapport-building” stage, it became apparent that our counterpart had not read the introductory material.
They did not possess the minimum information required to entertain the questions we were prepared to ask.
(Expect the unexpected).
We had not been in control of the process for getting the meeting.
And, that’s just fine.
But now, we needed to adapt.
With less time for rapport-building, we had to resort to “telling” them about ourselves.
Not our preference.
Little did we know at the time that our sponsor was quietly “auditing” the call.
He mentioned later that he had started a stopwatch at the beginning of the meeting.
He thought the beginning was a little slow, but “it really got momentum at the 15-minute mark”.
Could that have been because that’s when we stopped talking and started listening?.
Possibly.
It was right around the 15-minute mark when the “telling” ended and the questioning began.
In those last 15 minutes, we learned more about our counterpart, his team, his clients, their interests, and their doubts.
We detected one area rooted in either insecurity or a lack of trust with the concept we had just communicated.
Questions, asked at the right time, with the right words and tone, lay the foundation for trust.
And trust is absolutely required in a setting like this one.
Sales is one of the few professions where everyone thinks they know how to do your job.
In an internal meeting after this call, one of our stakeholders, eager to help, suggested the meeting might have gone better had we taken more control.
In their opinion, we could cover more ground by anticipating what the client would want to know and telling them more about us so they would not need to ask.
Essentially, he was recommending that we talk more, which means listen less.
We had a decision to make.
Nod in agreement and then proceed to completely ignore his advice?.
No, not an option. We must always be respectful, especially when the intent is good.
But explaining why his recommendation runs counter to professional selling requires time we did not have.
There are no shortcuts to learning that listening builds trust, while telling destroys it.
We simply thanked them for the feedback and stayed the course.
Cognitive Dissonance
When our counterpart began speaking, we picked up some valuable information.
Imagine that.
He offered that his team was an active participant in a well-known industry conference.
He recalled the most popular topics at this conference from this year and last.
Neither topic fit what we were describing in our meeting.
Since the credentialing part of our meeting was over, this wasn't an attempt to credential themselves.
No, this was something else.
No one likes to be caught off guard.
Hearing about a crucial technology for the very first time can be discomforting.
Resisting the implication that there is something this important that they didn’t know about is a phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance can cause a lack of trust, which is why this seemingly insignificant conversation was so important.
(Expect the unexpected).
Everybody Has a Plan
Of course, we had built a Call Plan for this meeting.
We had researched the background of the individuals attending.
We discovered the recent transactions they had completed.
We had objectives for the meeting and a list of questions to ask.
But we weren't a slave to a script.
We encountered a couple of surprises.
As good as our preparation was, it was just a plan.
Mike Tyson, the former Heavyweight Champion of the World, once famously said: “Everybody has a plan until they’re punched in the face.”
You have to be prepared to react instinctively.
When you encounter the unexpected, you must problem-solve on the fly.
In my experience, the best way to learn and get good at this is practice.
Put yourself in a position to get “at bats.”
Repetitions will make you better.
Lessons Learned
1) Have a Plan, but don’t be a slave to it.
2) Be Curious - Ask Questions.
3) Inspect every conversation - you may uncover “Trust” issues.
4) It takes repetition to get good.
Thank you for reading,
Jeff
