You Might Be Addicted to the Comeback

Some salespeople are at their best when everything is going wrong.

The pipeline is empty. The month is slipping away. There aren’t enough deals. The deadline is getting closer.

Then something happens.

The pressure hits, the energy shows up and suddenly they become unstoppable. Calls get made. Follow-ups get sent. Old leads get reopened. Conversations happen. Deals start moving.

And somehow, they pull it off.

Again.

Being able to perform under pressure is a strength. But there’s a problem nobody talks about.

If you get really good at rescuing yourself, you can accidentally build a life that constantly needs rescuing.

Think about the pattern.

The pipeline gets low. Pressure builds. You panic. You work like crazy. You have a great week or a great month. The pressure disappears, so you relax.

Then the pipeline starts getting low again.

Eventually, the comeback isn’t something that occasionally happens. It becomes the system.

You start depending on pressure to create the energy you need to move.

For high-energy salespeople, that can be especially dangerous because the comeback feels good. There’s urgency. There’s a challenge. There’s something to chase. Every call suddenly matters.

The boring work of preventing the problem doesn’t create the same feeling.

Prospecting when your pipeline is already full doesn’t feel urgent. Following up when the month is going well doesn’t feel necessary. Preparing for next month while you’re crushing this month feels like something that can wait.

So it waits.

Then the pressure comes back, and so do you.

The problem isn’t that you can perform under pressure. The problem is needing pressure before you perform.

There’s also something rewarding about proving you can pull it off. You were behind, everyone counted you out, and somehow you found another gear.

That feels a lot better than quietly doing the work every day and never creating the emergency in the first place.

But constantly digging yourself out of holes isn’t momentum. It’s recovery.

Real momentum is different. It means continuing to prospect when business is good. Following up before something becomes urgent. Doing some of the work today that your future self usually gets stuck rescuing.

You don’t need to lose your ability to perform under pressure. That ability can be incredibly valuable.

You just don’t want pressure to become the only way you know how to perform.

If you’re great at digging yourself out of holes, eventually you have to ask why you keep ending up in them.

Stanley Barsch
Founder, Motion Wins