OLD SCRIPT DETECTED
“They poach my deals”
Try this response:
“The deal timing is mine to control, regardless of what they have.”SEE THE PRACTICE
Build a response for this thought—and one move to prove it.
THE THOUGHT
“They poach my deals”
YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
“The deal timing is mine to control, regardless of what they have.”
ONE PRIVATE MOVE
Open your CRM and find one deal lost to another rep in the last month. Write down: your last activity date, your promised next-step date, the actual close date. Compare the gaps. Do this for only one deal, privately. The point is to see your own timeline, not to be right or…
The moment you notice a deal missing
- 01 / The discovery in your inbox
You see the closed deal email. Same account, same contact, different rep. Your stomach tightens. You remember the last call—the prospect seemed interested, asked you to follow up next week. But this rep moved faster, or knew someone, or had some advantage you didn't see coming. The thought arrives complete: They poached it. Not lost fairly. Not beaten in the pitch. Poached.
- 02 / How the story protects you tonight
The poach narrative is useful immediately. It explains the loss without requiring you to examine your own call notes, your follow-up timing, or the gap between that last conversation and today. You mentally audit what the other rep has—better territory, a warmer introduction, a six-month head start with the account. None of these audits are wrong; they may all be true. But the audit takes the form of grievance, not curiosity. It settles the question of what went wrong before you open your own recording or calendar. The relief is real: the loss is now someone else's doing, and nothing you do next week will change the facts of the game. You…
- 03 / The moment to notice what you're about to skip
Before you move to the next prospect, pause on one specific behavior: Have you documented in your CRM what happened with that deal? The date of your last touch, the next step you promised, whether you sent it in writing, and how many days passed before the other rep closed it? Most of the time, this audit never happens. The internal story is complete. But that record—that specific list of what *you* did and when—is the only data that teaches you whether this was a poach or a lag. Without it, you repeat the same lag with the next account, and blame the same invisible advantage. The interrupt is checking your own paper trail before you…
TRACE · 01/04
How this script runs you
- You can name their structural advantages but have never timed your own follow-up cycle against theirs.
- The deal loss is clear in your mind but absent from your CRM activity log—no note of the last conversation, no next-step date recorded.
- You spend more mental energy mapping their win pattern than reviewing your own call sequence for that account.
SOURCE_LOCATED · 02/04
The hidden rule underneath
The Rigged-Game Script
If I'm losing territory, leads, or customers to a peer, the game itself must be rigged—because I cannot afford to believe my own actions determined the outcome. Blaming the fixed game protects my self-image tonight and guarantees I won't practice the behaviors that might change the result.
FORGING_REPLACEMENT · 03/04
Replacement lines (record these)
- The deal timing is mine to control, regardless of what they have.
- I close what I touch consistently—and I measure the gap between my touch and theirs in writing.
- I protect deals with speed and documentation, not by resenting their speed.
Generated per person in the app — these are the flavor, not your script. Yours is built from your exact words.
INSTALL · 04/04
The protocol, on one card
When I think
“They poach my deals”
I say
“The deal timing is mine to control, regardless of what they have.”
Then I do one thing
Open your CRM and find one deal lost to another rep in the last month. Write down: your last activity date, your promised next-step date, the actual close date. Compare the gaps. Do this for only one deal, privately. The point is to see your own timeline, not to be right or…
STATUS: READY_TO_INSTALL
Wipe this thought4 minutes. Your voice. Free.
The wipe protocol
- Write the thought exactly as it plays: "They poach my deals". Word for word — the wipe targets the sentence, not the vibe.
- Trace the rule and the avoided action. What does this thought conveniently excuse you from doing?
- Record the replacement lines below in your own voice. Speak like you mean it — no recording, no install.
- Run the loop: play it every morning and night, log one proof action a day for 7 days.
Straight answers
If they really do have better territory or connections, isn't it still poaching?
Maybe. But you cannot separate a real advantage from a real lag without the dates. The person who moves in three days beats the person who moves in seven days, regardless of who had the lead first. Knowing which one you are is the only data that works.
Won't keeping better records just prove that I lost fair and square?
Sometimes yes. But fair losses teach you concrete steps—faster follow-up, earlier paper trails, tighter cycles. Blaming poaching teaches you nothing, and you repeat it on the next deal. One honest loss is better data than a year of poaches that never get examined.
What if I document everything and I still lose deals to them?
Then you have two paths: compete on the same speed and detail they use, or admit that something else—price, product, territory assignment—is genuinely beyond your control. Either path is real. The poach story skips both and leaves you stuck in the same place.
Related old scripts
Related self-checks
Related science
Researchers to explore
Related mechanisms
The research behind this script
- Sales Performance Rankings: Impact of the Type of Information Displayed on Sales Force Outcomes — Ahearne, Pourmasoudi, Atefi & Lam, Journal of Marketing, 2025
- Resolving the salesperson competitiveness-performance paradox: benign vs. malicious envy — Industrial Marketing Management, 2024
- Why Do Salespeople Quit? Own and Peer Effects on Salesperson Turnover — Sunder, Kumar, Goreczny & Maurer, Journal of Marketing Research, 2017