What Sales and Customer-Facing Professionals Can Learn from The Impostor Phenomenon
Hitting a number every quarter means your worth can feel like it resets on a fixed schedule, no matter how strong the last one was. A closed deal gets credited to a client who was already going to buy, a good customer call gets credited to the client being easy to work with, and the sting of a lost deal can erase months of a strong track record in a single afternoon. The scoreboard is public, which makes the discounting habit easy to justify.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Explaining away the deals you actually closed
A closed deal gets credited to a client who was already going to buy, a strong customer relationship gets credited to the client being easy to work with, and a good quarter gets read as a favorable market rather than the calls and follow-through behind it.
Crediting the client or the market instead of the case you built and the objections you handled erases the actual skill behind the close.
After closing a deal, name two specific moments in the process where your judgment mattered before allowing any talk of an easy client.
The big-call relief loop
Anxiety before a major pitch or renewal call often drives over-preparation, the call goes well, and the relief reads as "I got lucky this time" instead of "the preparation and relationship work paid off."
Treating relief as a narrow escape leaves the same dread waiting before the next big call, no matter how many have gone well already.
Right after a call goes well, name the specific preparation or relationship work that made it go well before the relief fades into vague luck.
A culture that only counts the number
Sales culture often reduces a whole quarter of work to a single number on a board, and someone praised early mainly for a natural gift with people can mistake the discipline behind a close, research, follow-up, patience, for something that should not have been necessary.
Assuming that naming how much preparation went into a deal will make the win look less impressive keeps colleagues from learning what actually produces results.
Once a month, walk a colleague through one specific step in a deal that most people never see.
Letting the evidence actually land
Another strong quarter rarely settles the doubt, because the discounting habit adapts and finds a new reason each time, an easy client, good timing, a lucky introduction. What helps is a smaller, repeatable habit: pausing right as a win is about to be waved off, and treating "I am not sure exactly why that closed" as a reason to look closer, not dismiss it. Practiced across many quarters, this shifts what evidence gets to count, even when no single deal feels conclusive alone.
A strong close and a lost deal can land the same week, and the instinct is to erase credit for the close while treating the loss as proof the whole track record has been luck. When both show up together, address the loss first with a plain, factual review of what was in your control, then return to naming what the close actually required. Trying to weigh both at once lets the loss take over the story.
Name one thing, honestly
- Which recent closed deal have you already quietly credited to an easy client rather than your own work? - Is there a lost deal you are still treating as proof of failure long after the quarter ended? - What would change if a strong quarter counted as evidence of skill rather than a streak waiting to end?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Once a month, walk a colleague through one specific step in a deal that most people never see.