The single greatest cause of sales “failure” is the fear of rejection— that creeping feeling that customers will tell you “no”. It can be so paralyzing that rookie and veteran sales people will go to great lengths to avoid that word.
This fear disables you from cold calling, closing, and from getting up in the morning. You see a lot sales people killing time at Starbucks; it is fear that makes them drink the coffee, not the caffeine.
Frankly, not of all us are cut out for sales, but most sales people can beat this fear. It can be conquered by a simple technique called “systematic desensitization”. This is a fancy term that describes how you can beat your fear by confronting it repeatedly. That’s right. The more you confront the fear, the more you will minimize it. You do it again and again until you lose your fear.
Conversely, if you do nothing and if you don’t confront the fear, you make your fears even larger. If you don’t make cold calls, they will become harder to do.
As it is says on the shampoo bottle: lather, rinse, and repeat.
John Bradley Jackson
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