Selling has a negative connotation that polite
people don’t want to be associated with. They think to be a good seller you
have to be pushy, or slick, and talk too much or trick people. When I approach prospects from a position of helpfulness and curiosity about their business, I become a lot more comfortable with my role, and the client became a lot more comfortable with me. As soon as I relaxed and turn it into a conversation about their business, we became partners and I stopped “selling.”
I needed to build a certain amount of structure around me and the emotional factors that can be overwhelming or debilitating. As salespeople, we can learn to become more resilient to those emotional triggers that can disincentivize you from engaging in productive sales conversations, insulate your inner self from certain kinds of rejections, and put together a thoughtful, systematic toolkit to get, and stay, productive.
I hear a lot of people holding themselves back
when they are in roles where they have to go out and connect with people. They are reluctant. Don't be reluctant.
Salespeople on our staff have been unwilling to make the calls or couldn’t actually see that what they were not doing was affecting their performance. This is frustrating to both the seller and their managers. Small business owners have a sales function, and sometimes, that lack of action, because it is emotionally uncomfortable, can derail a business that otherwise had a good chance.
If you are willing to look within, you can overcome many of the mental speedbumps and hang-ups that undermine a salesperson’s performance, and push beyond what people expect from a salesperson.
Learning to recognize when a buyer offers an objection as a simple worry vs. a negotiating tactic defines the difference between sellers with lots of healthy business, and sellers who are being run-around by clients. We’ll cover the checklist to help you evaluate when it is time to double-down, and when it’s smart to walk away.