Leading Deals You Don’t Control
Why Sales Success Depends on Influence, Not Authority
Warren Buffett once said, “A leader is someone who can get things done through other people.”
On its face, that sounds obvious. Almost dull. Leaders delegate. They coordinate. They don’t do everything themselves.
But in sales—where you have no formal authority, no reporting lines, and no ability to compel anyone to act—that sentence becomes surgical.
Because in complex deals, your job isn’t to manage activities.
It’s to lead people you can’t control toward decisions they’re afraid to make.
That’s not a motivational statement. It’s a structural reality most salespeople never fully internalize.
The Thing No One Tells You About Enterprise Sales
Most sales training treats deals like project plans:
Complete discovery
Present solution
Handle objections
Negotiate terms
Close
The steps sound rational. Linear. Controllable.
But deals don’t die because reps forgot a follow-up or skipped a qualification question.
They die because:
No one internally owned the decision
Stakeholders never aligned on priorities
Risk felt heavier than reward
Momentum dissolved into “let’s revisit this next quarter”
In other words, the deal stalled because the buyer’s organization couldn’t move itself forward—and the rep didn’t know how to lead them through it.
That’s the difference between managing an opportunity and leading one.
Management is task execution.
Leadership is human coordination.
And in B2B sales, especially in education, government, or enterprise environments, coordination is everything.
Leadership Without the Luxury of Authority
Most leadership comes with structural advantages.
If you’re a principal, people report to you. If you’re a VP, you control budgets and priorities. If you’re a superintendent, you set direction and hold people accountable.
Authority does some of the work for you.
Sales has none of that.
As a salesperson, you have:
No control over the buyer’s timeline
No power to force internal alignment
No authority to demand urgency
No ability to override competing priorities
Yet you’re still expected to produce an outcome.
This makes sales a rare—and unusually demanding—form of leadership: influence without authority.
The question shifts from What do I need to do next? to Who needs to move, and why would they choose to?
That reframe changes everything.
What Managing Looks Like vs. What Leading Looks Like
The distinction shows up quickly in how reps behave inside opportunities.
Managing an opportunity focuses on:
Tracking activity
Advancing stages
Responding to buyer requests
Waiting for direction
Leading an opportunity focuses on:
Creating clarity where buyers have ambiguity
Establishing ownership where no one has claimed it
Framing decisions so they’re easier to make
Aligning fragmented stakeholders around a shared outcome
Managers ask, “What’s next?”
Leaders ask, “What needs to change for this to move?”
That second question is harder. It requires reading the room, understanding power dynamics, and diagnosing friction points most buyers can’t articulate themselves.
But it’s also what separates reps who close predictably from those who hope their champions “figure it out.”
What This Actually Looks Like in a Deal
Let me show you what sales leadership looks like in practice—not as theory, but as observable behavior.
1. Leaders Create a Shared Vision When None Exists
Buyers rarely start a deal with alignment. What they have is fragmented urgency:
IT wants better security
Finance wants lower costs
Operations wants less complexity
Leadership wants all three, faster
Each stakeholder believes their lens is the right one. And they’re not wrong—they’re just incomplete.
Sales leaders don’t try to convince each person individually. They help the group see the outcome they’re collectively trying to create.
Instead of pitching features, they ask:
“If this works perfectly, what changes for your organization? Not just technically—but operationally, culturally, strategically. What does success actually look like?”
When people can agree on the destination, decisions become easier. Without that shared vision, every conversation feels like negotiation.
2. Leaders Design Decisions, Not Just Facilitate Conversations
Most stalled deals don’t suffer from lack of information.
They suffer from decision avoidance.
Buyers are often paralyzed by:
Too many voices
Unclear criteria
Competing priorities
Fear of making the wrong call
Leading sellers recognize this and structure the decision to make it less overwhelming.
Instead of saying:
“Let me know what you think.”
They say:
“Based on what we’ve discussed, there are two viable paths. Each has tradeoffs. If we align on which risk matters more to you—speed versus cost, flexibility versus control—the decision becomes clear. Which one keeps you up at night?”
That’s not persuasion.
That’s leadership through clarity.
3. Leaders Assign Ownership Without Demanding It
In complex deals, nothing moves unless someone internally owns it.
But buyers rarely volunteer for that role. Ownership feels risky. It means accountability if things go wrong.
Sales leaders invite ownership by making it safe, clear, and beneficial.
They do this by:
Naming who needs to be involved (so the buyer doesn’t have to guess)
Clarifying what each stakeholder is responsible for (so ambiguity doesn’t stall progress)
Showing how progress benefits the group (so ownership feels like opportunity, not burden)
They don’t demand ownership.
They create conditions where ownership becomes the logical choice.
This is Buffett’s insight in practice: the work gets done because others choose to do it.
Why This Distinction Produces Different Results
Reps who primarily manage opportunities tend to experience:
Longer sales cycles
Fragile forecasts
Late-stage surprises
Heavy dependence on “buyer urgency” that may never materialize
Reps who lead opportunities tend to produce:
Clearer deal momentum
Earlier risk identification
Stronger internal champions
More predictable outcomes
Leadership compresses time.
Management documents it.
The Shift That Separates Good from Great
Here’s what I’ve observed working with hundreds of sellers across K-12, SaaS, and enterprise environments:
The most effective salespeople don’t do dramatically more work than their peers.
They do different work.
They stop thinking of opportunities as pipelines to be managed and start treating them as systems of people to be led.
They recognize that in every complex deal, there’s a hidden org chart:
Who actually makes decisions
Who influences those decisions
Who blocks without saying so
Who champions quietly
Who disappears when accountability arrives
Managing a deal means updating Salesforce.
Leading a deal means understanding that map—and helping the buyer navigate it themselves.
What This Means for Coaching
If sales is leadership without authority, coaching must evolve accordingly.
Most managers ask:
“What stage is the deal in?”
“When’s the next meeting?”
“Is procurement engaged?”
Those questions inspect activity. They don’t build capability.
Better questions sound like this:
“Who’s actually driving this decision—and who isn’t?”
“Where is alignment fragile?”
“What belief needs to change for the buyer to move forward?”
“What risk are they really trying to avoid?”
This shifts coaching from inspection to development—from checking boxes to building influence.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Sales is one of the few professions where you’re held accountable for outcomes you can’t directly control.
You can’t force a buyer to prioritize your deal.
You can’t compel a CFO to release budget.
You can’t make an executive sponsor show up to meetings.
What you can do is create the conditions where movement becomes easier than inertia.
That’s not manipulation.
It’s leadership.
And leadership, as Buffett reminds us, is simply this: getting things done through other people.
The best salespeople understand that their real job isn’t to close deals.
It’s to help buyers close themselves.
Everything else is just logistics.
"Most stalled deals don’t suffer from lack of information.
They suffer from decision avoidance." 🔥