Issue #117

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Stop Waiting For Permission

Every seller knows the pattern: you know what to do, you can see the next move, yet you stall.

You tell yourself you’re waiting for the right timing or approval or the stars to magically align, but what you’re really waiting for is permission.

In enterprise sales, that delay costs momentum. That can sound the death knell for complex projects.

Buyers move on, budgets get allocated elsewhere, and opportunities quietly die.

The "Permission Trap" sounds and even feels rational, but it’s fear in disguise.

Why We Crave Permission

Selling exposes you to rejection and judgment. Rejection threatens belonging. Judgment threatens competence.

So the brain creates safe excuses: wait for feedback, polish the deck, get sign-off first.

These micro-delays protect your status in the short term but destroy progress over time.

Underneath, what people crave isn’t permission. It’s psychological safety.

A belief that taking action won’t result in humiliation, wasted effort, or failure in public.

The stronger that safety feels, the faster you move. It is up to you to create that feeling of safety for yourself, life will never do it for you.

The Real Fix Is Reducing Emotional Risk

You don’t need external validation to act. You need to make action feel safe enough to try.

That means reframing selling from performance to practice.

When you act "to learn" instead of "to prove", the risk shrinks.

Curiosity replaces anxiety and the buyer’s reaction becomes data, not judgment.

Habit and ritual help here.

If you build a repeatable pattern that removes the decision moment, you remove the fear.

The best performers don’t feel brave; they follow routine.

Ritual turns courage into muscle memory.

Start every morning the same way.

Review one target, one problem, one outreach. No debate, no approval loop, just motion.

When you’re in rhythm, permission becomes irrelevant.

The Permission Framework

Use this to rewire your reflexes this week.

1. Define The Smallest Useful Move

Shrink the step until it’s just outside your comfort zone. “Get one reply,” not “win the deal.” Small moves generate proof and confidence.

2. Reduce The Emotional Downside

Plan your safety net. If the call flops, what’s the fallback? If they say no, what do you learn? Having a plan for failure disarms fear before it arrives.

3. Anchor In Purpose, Not Approval

When your energy aims at impressing others, you hesitate. Re-aim it toward impact.

Ask, Who gains if I do this well? Maybe your team gets clarity, your client saves time, or your company learns something new.

Purpose gives weight to your action. Approval drains it.

Selling from purpose replaces “Am I good enough?” with “Does this help someone?”

That shift ends the need for permission.

Getting your beliefs sorted also gives you unbounded energy, read about it here.

4. Create A Bias For Motion

Adopt the rule: I move unless there’s a clear reason not to. Waiting becomes the exception, not the default. Momentum feeds confidence, confidence feeds momentum.

5. Review Without Blame

After every step, write three quick notes: what worked, what didn’t, what’s next. Reflection makes mistakes safe and turns experience into evidence.

Why This Works

Each small act that ends without disaster proves to your nervous system that risk is survivable. The brain rewires through exposure.

What once felt dangerous now feels ordinary.

That’s how confidence grows: repetition with feedback, not permission from above.

Psychologists call this self-efficacy, belief in your ability to influence outcomes. It isn’t built in your head. It’s built through motion.

How To Apply It Now

• Choose one stalled opportunity.
• Define the next smallest move that creates learning.
• Time-box it within 24 hours.
• Execute, review, and record what you discovered.
• Repeat.

After a few cycles you’ll notice the fear fade. You’ll stop waiting to be told it’s okay because your system already knows it is.

Here's another way to get stalled opportunities going again, click here.

Monday Morning Checklist

Use this aide memoir to get yourself going at the beginning of every week (or day, if you need to!)

1. Identify the smallest next move you can take now
2. Reduce the downside with a clear fallback
3. Connect the action to who benefits from it
4. Default to action unless there’s a huge reason to pause
5. Reflect immediately and capture the learning

Permission isn’t given. It’s grown within yourself.

Every time you act despite uncertainty, you prove that movement itself is the only approval you ever needed.

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​My Udemy course is available to give you the foundations of enterprise sales in bite size chunks, with loads of diagrams and the comfort of knowing it is all road tested, success driven and it works.

​Watch one here, all about how procurement try to ruin your life.

Or you can get ahead of your competitors for that Sales VP job by reading this, it's your unfair advantage:

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