Money Lies on the Street. Some Pick It Up.

Early January 2026. An entrepreneur sits across from me. The tax office has seized assets. Liquidity: zero. Existential pressure at a level most executives know from stories, not from personal experience. Eight weeks later, end of February: two new employees hired, order books full, growth.

At the same time, I'm looking for specialized software for my practice. I find a provider. I reach out actively. I have interest, budget, and a clear idea of what I need. What follows: no immediate confirmation. Instead, intrusive calls without appointment coordination. Then the information that the next online appointment would be possible in three weeks.

Three weeks. For a prospect who contacted them on their own.

Same infrastructure. Same country. Same bureaucracy. The difference lies in behavior.

What Research Says About Response Time

A study by Oldroyd, McElheran, and Elkington, published in 2011 in the Harvard Business Review, analyzed 2.24 million sales inquiries. The result: Companies that responded within one hour to an inquiry had a seven-fold higher probability of qualifying the contact compared to companies that waited longer than one hour. After 24 hours, the probability dropped by 60-fold (1).

The data becomes clearer when you shorten the timeframe. The same study found: Those who responded within five minutes reached the prospect with 100-fold higher probability than after 30 minutes. The research team at MIT confirmed: Contact within five minutes increased the qualification rate by 21-fold (1).

My software provider offered me three weeks. That's 30,240 minutes.

The problem isn't scheduling. The problem isn't the CRM system. The problem isn't the skills shortage. The problem is a thinking error about how human motivation works.

Interest Is a Window, Not a State

When a person actively makes contact, they are in a state of heightened readiness to act. This state is unstable. It doesn't last long. Behavioral economics describes this as Temporal Discounting: The subjective value of an option decreases with increasing temporal distance. What seems urgent today feels less important tomorrow (2).

This applies to the potential customer requesting an offer. And it applies to the entrepreneur postponing a decision.

My client with the tax seizure had no window for postponement. His pressure eliminated the option to wait for better conditions. The result: quick decisions, clear offers, consistent action. And growth within eight weeks.

The software provider had no pressure. Their product sells somehow. Customers wait because switching costs are high. The provider confuses market presence with excellence.

Why Market Survival Isn't Proof of Quality

A company that exists isn't automatically well-managed. Often customers are inert. Switching costs deter. Alternatives are lacking. Market presence measures survival, not performance.

This is a variant of what Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes in "Antifragile": Systems that don't break under stress appear robust. But robustness isn't strength. A company that exists despite poor sales processes has been lucky. Not proven competent (3).

I say this with a caveat: I don't know the internal circumstances of the software provider. Perhaps resources are lacking. Perhaps there are good reasons for the delay. But from the prospect's perspective, that doesn't matter. From the prospect's perspective, a three-week wait says: "Your problem isn't urgent."

And with that, the impulse dies.

The Decisive Variable: Locus of Control

Julian Rotter formulated in 1966 in his original work "Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement" a concept that explains the difference between my two stories. Rotter distinguished between internal and external locus of control: the belief that outcomes depend on one's own behavior, versus the belief that external forces determine outcomes (4).

Ng, Sorensen, and Eby conducted a meta-analysis in 2006 in the Journal of Organizational Behavior across numerous studies on the topic. Their finding: internal locus of control correlates positively with job satisfaction, work motivation, performance, and career success (5).

The question isn't whether the correlation is causal. The question is whether you recognize which pattern dominates in your company.

In Germany, you constantly hear: Bureaucracy. Taxes. Skills shortage. System. All external causes. All external locus of control. And all correctly described, in the sense of: Yes, these problems exist. But the conclusion that these problems excuse one's own behavior is a different statement. One that isn't scientifically tenable.

What Experiential Avoidance Has to Do with Sales

Why doesn't a company respond within an hour to an inquiry, even though the data has been known since 2011? The technical answer: lack of automation, poor processes, resource shortage. The psychological answer: Experiential Avoidance.

Steven Hayes and colleagues defined Experiential Avoidance in 1996 as the attempt to avoid unpleasant inner experiences, even when this avoidance causes long-term damage (6). Their 2006 review showed: higher avoidance scores correlated with depression, anxiety, and lower quality of life (7).

In companies, this looks like: The sales manager knows his response times are too long but avoids the conversation with the CEO. The CEO suspects his sales process is losing customers but avoids the analysis. The team leader senses his team is overloaded but avoids the conflict with management.

Each avoidance creates a small loss. Together they create a company that makes a prospect wait three weeks.

The Counter-Example: Acting Under Pressure

My client with the tax seizure had no option for avoidance. His pressure was so high that the unpleasant feelings that normally block actions became irrelevant. Fear of rejection? Unimportant when the alternative is insolvency. Fear of price negotiations? Insignificant when there's no money.

He improved processes. Formulated offers more clearly. Decided instead of hesitating.

And suddenly orders emerge. Not because Germany changed. Not because bureaucracy disappeared. Not because magical funding programs appeared. But because his behavior changed.

This isn't a motivational poster. This is proof of reality.

Why External Attribution Is a Strategic Dead End

The reflexive reference to external causes has a function: It relieves. Those who see the blame in the system don't have to deal with their own contribution. That feels better in the short term. Long term, it's a trap.

Rotter himself warned against over-interpretation in 1975: External locus of control isn't pathology. Bureaucracy influences business processes. Tax burden influences margins. Skills shortage influences capacity. All true.

But the question isn't whether external factors exist. The question is whether you adapt your behavior to the factors you control. Research shows a clear tendency: People with internal locus of control adapt. People with external locus of control wait (5).

My client adapted. The software provider waits. The results speak for themselves.

Self-Deception as Strategic Risk

The uncomfortable thesis reads: When money lies on the street and you don't pick it up, it's rarely because of the asphalt.

It's about priorities. It's about intellectual laziness. It's about organizational inertia masquerading as professionalism. "We have processes." "We can't go faster." "The market is difficult." All sentences that sound plausible and can still be wrong.

Sales that don't understand customer psychology aren't structural victims. They're imprecisely managed. Companies that prevent growth often do so through internal friction, not external enemies.

In my last article I described how chronic news consumption impairs the prefrontal cortex and puts executives into survival mode. The mechanism here is related: External attribution is a form of cognitive avoidance. Instead of examining one's own agency, the narrative is constructed that action is pointless. The brain prefers this story because it provides relief. And precisely this relief prevents the change that would be necessary.

What Changes When You Recognize the Pattern

Framework conditions are never perfect. They never were. The decisive variable remains behavior.

One waits for better times. The other responds in real-time. And precisely there, market survival separates from market leadership.

Your sales responds slowly to inquiries? Don't ask about the CRM. Ask why nobody addresses the problem. Your growth stagnates despite good market conditions? Don't ask about the economic climate. Ask which decision has been postponed for months. Your best people are leaving? Don't ask about the labor market. Ask which conversation you're avoiding.

The pattern is always the same: An unpleasant feeling is avoided. An action is postponed. A result fails to materialize. And the explanation is sought in the system, not in one's own behavior.

Recognizing this is the first step. Acting is the second. The difference between my client and the software provider doesn't lie in the insight. It lies in the consequence afterward.

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Sources Used with URLs:

1. Oldroyd, J. B., McElheran, K., & Elkington, D. (2011). The Short Life of Online Sales Leads. Harvard Business Review, March 2011. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298137032_The_short_life_of_online_sales_leads

2. Frederick, S., Loewenstein, G., & O'Donoghue, T. (2002). Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review. Journal of Economic Literature, 40(2), 351-401. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/002205102320161311

3. Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Random House.

4. Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1-28. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-19211-001

5. Ng, T. W. H., Sorensen, K. L., & Eby, L. T. (2006). Locus of control at work: A meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(8), 1057-1087. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/job.416

6. Hayes, S. C., Wilson, K. G., Gifford, E. V., Follette, V. M., & Strosahl, K. (1996). Experiential avoidance and behavioral disorders: A functional dimensional approach to diagnosis and treatment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 1152-1168. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8991302/

7. Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1-25. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005796705002147