Do You Struggle With Fear Of Failure or Rejection (Part 2)

In my last post I wrote about prospecting and how the fear of failure and rejection keep a lot of sales people from prospecting as much as they need to.

Let’s pick up where I left off and talk about fear of rejection. If you’ve been around sales any time at all someone has told your or taught you that “sales is a numbers game” and that “you need a thick skin to be in sales”. Well that is especially true if you’re doing it wrong.

We dealt with the fear of failure by realizing what the real reason for prospecting is and by changing our objective. If you missed it you can check it out here: https://healthysellingsystem.com/do-you-struggle-with-fear-of-failure-or-rejection/

Learn how to overcome fear of rejection.

We will handle the fear of rejection much the same way. When we have the proper objective and we aren’t attempting to sell anything while we are prospecting we won’t be creating resistance and we can actually take “No.” for an answer. Since we are looking for people with an interest and a need as well as the budget to pay for the solution when they don’t meet that criteria we are successful in qualifying them out. Move on.

That means we aren’t going to try to convince them to let us have an appointment. We aren’t going to desire to change their mind. We are simply going to say thanks and move on. We can always call them back in a couple of weeks if they meet our ideal client profile. Since we didn’t create any ill will by being pushy or attempting to get them to change their mind they will take our call.

The key is with each call to approach them with a different set of benefits to avoid them from always hearing the same thing every time. After a few calls you will get a very good idea of what they are interested in. One of the times you call them will be the right time and they will want to go to the next step. (This is a good point for me to tell you that the next step is only something you should do if they tell you they are ready to invest in a solution. Otherwise you will get really good at presenting and then getting the “stall”)

Prospecting is the life blood of sales so if your sales are not consistently improving or if you have good months then bad months it’s almost always due to prospecting. Take the time to really learn prospecting and you will be on your way to doubling your sales.

If you struggle with sales or prospecting drop me a note, mike@healthysellingsystem.com and/or leave a comment below and let me know what your biggest challenge. Also if this struck a cord share this post with your friends. Chances are it will help them as well.

Do you struggle with fear of failure or rejection?

If you knew the you never had to face rejection or failure in your prospecting, what difference would that make?

You see statistics tell us that 48% of salespeople never even follow-up with a prospect. Can you relate to that? I mean, it’s hard for me to imagine 48% of salespeople never follow-up with a prospect. Makes you wonder how they make any sales.

The same statistics tell us that 25% of salespeople stop after a second contact. I guess if they didn’t want it the second time they don’t want it all.

And, only 12% of salespeople make more than three contacts. Guess what folks, these are the salespeople making most of the sales.

When you put all this into perspective, it helps explain the fact that 2% of sales are made on the first contact, 3% are made on the second contact and 5% are made on the third, 10% are made on the fourth and 80% of sales are made on the fifth to 12th contact. Can you afford to allow your fear of rejection or fear of failure to keep you from your prospecting and follow-up?

After training over 1,200 salespeople and working with more than 100 entrepreneurs I can assure you that there are only a few reasons salespeople stop before they get the sale. For the ones that don’t even follow-up it’s fear. Fear of rejection and/or fear of failure. It’s these fears that hold them back and to some extent its the same fear that causes the salespeople that will make the follow-up to stop just before the sale.

Let’s face it no one likes to be rejected and no one likes to lose. As the saying goes: “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss.”

OK kidding aside it’s our fear that holds us back, what can we do about it? For starters it helps if you put things in perspective. One of the most important things you can do in sales is to be prospecting constantly. It should be a part of your daily routine. The problem is that when your selling the last thing you want to do is prospect and the biggest reason I hear from those I work with is because it has the most rejection and failure associated with it.

So again I ask, what if you knew you would never face rejection or failure again? What difference would that make in your prospecting? Imagine how that might feel.

Let’s start with the fear of failure first. Failure has different meaning for different people and if you simplify it most people will agree that it’s when you don’t get what you had planned or hoped for, or in other words you did not meet your objective.

If you agree that in it’s essence that is what failure is then we can eliminate fear of failure by properly defining our objective for prospecting.

Without fail when I talk to a struggling salesperson or entrepreneur, if I ask them what the purpose of prospecting is they tell me it’s to make sales. No wonder over time they get to the point they can’t stand it, and they keep looking for other ways to sell their goods or services. They have the wrong objective.

The purpose of prospecting is to find qualified people that have a need and are indeed a good fit for what you have to offer, and that you desire to work with. Did you see the words “make a sale” in there? Do you suppose that a lot of the people you talk to won’t fit this description? That’s the point. Those that don’t fit your criteria are unqualified, which is a success. If they have a need and desire for what you offer, you are successfully qualifying them.  And best of all, you are qualifying them to see if you even desire to work with them or not.  If they aren’t someone you want to work with they are out. If they don’t have a need or don’t see that they have a need they are out.

Simple, no failure. When you have the proper objective for prospecting you literally can’t fail. By the way the same holds true for sales.

Think about what this really means for you. Get really clear about why you are prospecting. It’s not to make a sale. It’s to qualify people in or out so you discover the people you want to do business with. Either way you are a success.

Besides fear of failure, the other fear that holds people back is the fear of rejection so check back for the next post and I will discuss how to eliminate rejection from your process.

Did this post provide you with an ah-ha moment?  Share your thoughts and comments below, and if you know a struggling sales person you might decide to share this on LinkedIn, or another social media website.

How To Properly Close A Sale

Are you struggling to close sales?

In my last post I talked about the fact that if you stop trying to close you can make more sales. You can imagine, I got a fair amount of feedback from people who didn’t understand how they might make more sales if they stop trying to close. I understand that this goes against everything most people teach about the sales process.

And if you want to get different results you have to do something different.

I was a hard-core closer and I would close people because I could. I am the expert. I was more prepared. I could overcome their objections. So I made sales. That doesn’t mean it was always what was best for the prospect or client. I honestly believed that if I represented a great product (and I always did) that it was okay for me to close aggressively.

I would’ve gone on like that forever, if it hadn’t been for a parenting class of all things. In the parenting class several things caused me to rethink my core beliefs. One of the things that just blew my mind was the idea that our children are in our lives for our transformation. The more I thought about that. The more I understood that everyone is in our lives for our transformation, and that includes prospects and clients.

The next thing that became challenged was what I had always been taught was the greatest motivator. You see, I had been taught that pain and pleasure with the two big motivators and that we were more likely to do something to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. I always thought using pain to close was right. It seemed to work well in my sales process and in truth I didn’t mind manipulating people by using their pain, if that’s what it took to get sales.

Of course, I convince myself it wasn’t really manipulation. It was “persuasion”. What I learned in the parenting class was that love is the greatest motivator. The instructor taught us that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. This tremendous sacrifice was motivated by love. He pointed out that it says in the Bible “No greater love has this then a man would lay down his life…” The instructor gave many, many examples of how love is the greatest motivator.

These thoughts challenged what I had always believed. As I began to examine my thoughts and my beliefs. I knew I needed to change. It wasn’t right for me to make sales just because I was capable. I considered myself a master closer, an expert at sales. I was always either number one or in the top 1% in any organization. I saw this as a challenge to become better than I had ever been before.

I recalled a great sales book by Og Mandino titled The Greatest Salesman in the World. If you haven’t read the book. I couldn’t possibly give it a higher recommendation. Do yourself a favor, go buy it, get it from the library or borrow it from a friend. Whatever you do read the book. In chapter 9 it talks about the scroll marked II. The scroll marked II explains how the greatest weapon/tool a salesman has in the whole world, the most important thing he possesses is love.

I read the book many, many years before I went to the parenting class and after going to the parenting class, and having my beliefs challenged I chose to reread Og’s book. That began a new journey that changed my life and how I close when selling forever.

These days, when I train salespeople (I’ve trained over 1,200) I no longer teach them how to close sales. What I do instead is teach them how to prospect without rejection or failure.  I teach how to properly qualify a prospect to uncover their needs, and to determine whether or not we are a good fit to work together. If they are a good fit then based on that information I teach them how to put together a presentation specifically about the prospects need for a solution and how they deliver that solution.

When you focus on your prospect, or clients, specific needs. And you tailor your presentation to solve those problems, and only those problems, you build value, you build trust, and you are perceived as the expert. When it’s done like this, you avoid objections, rejections or pressure and the close is simply a natural byproduct of your well done presentation.

Sales is about a relationship and it should be built on trust, not manipulation, pressure or stress. When you’re willing to put your prospects needs first, even if that means referring them to a competitor because a competitor has a better fit for what they need, then, and only then, are you on your way to being a master salesperson.

Have you struggled when closing prospects or clients?  Leave me a comment about your struggles closing and share this article on LinkedIn or other social media to help the world of sales people learn to sell with a healthy system if you benefitted from reading.