Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of looking the fool, call reluctance, there are lots of different names for it, but they all amount to the same thing. Most of us in sales have felt it at one time or another....its symptoms vary from damp palms and a little cold sweat to full blown gut-wrenching immobilisation, peppered with a fervent wish that you were anyplace else, even hell would be preferable. Pure unadulterated fear and if you’re living with it day after day, heaven help you!
I have has a theory about fear. I call it False Expectations Appearing Real and it makes a lot of sense. You worry about what might happen in the next cold call or during the next presentation and pretty soon you can’t function because the worry takes over. Worse yet, it expands and encompasses other parts of your life. If you can’t do your job properly, other things naturally suffer as a consequence. So how do you deal with it, how do you conquer work-related fear?
If we start by analysing the cause of most fear we can get to its probable cause and deal with it. All fear is self-inflicted and caused by how our minds perceive things. Perhaps you had some negative experience, a customer asked you about your product and you didn’t have a clue what to tell them, you felt like a fool in front of them and that feeling festered and grew until it paralysed you. Maybe just the thought of cold calling, knocking on a stranger’s door and having them reject you, makes you break out in hives. Or does standing in front of a crowded boardroom giving a full presentation to a bunch of important clients makes you feel queasy?
All of these have one thing in common. They represent the x factor. The things you don’t know yet. The questions you don’t know the answer to. Do you think if you figured out what the answers were, you’d stand a good chance of conquering your fear? Let’s consider then what would happen if you knew the answer to your customer’s questions and objections before they asked them, would that help ease the fear of looking like an idiot? How about if you knew that behind the door you were knocking on was not a prospect who was going to personally reject you, would that make it easier to go out and knock on a few more? And what about that big presentation in front of all those people? If you knew exactly what you were going to say and knew what sorts of questions they might ask you and how you would answer them, would that help ease your fear? Of course it would.
So the simple answer to eliminating most fear in selling is knowledge. You can’t anticipate every scenario, but you can certainly cover the most common ones. Learn the answers to your customers most often asked questions and if they throw you a curve ball every once in a while, practice your stock response. “I don’t have an answer for you on that right now, but I can find out from our technical people (or support staff or whomever should know).”
If you had knowledge about your cold calling statistics, you’d know how many calls it would take you to find someone who would be interested in what you have to say. It’s a numbers game. That means it’s not personal. Knowing that allows you freedom to knock on the doors that will definitely say “No” to you in order for you to finally reach the one worth their weight in gold to you, the prospect who says “Yes, tell me more.” If you don’t knock on all the “No’s” you’ll never find the “Yes” so look at it as being one step closer for every no you get. Don’t dwell on them and don’t take it personally, they’re only numbers.
Of course, knowing what you’re going to say in that big presentation is one thing, but when your knees are shaking, it’s not so easy to get the words out, so in this scenario, your knowledge has to be not only what you’re going to say but how you’re going to say it. The knowledge you need is in the doing, so practice your presentation until you have it down pat. Practice answering their questions. Practice to gain knowledge of how it feels to stand in the front of a room with every eye upon you, even if you have to elicit the help of your friends, family, colleagues to stand-in as your audience.
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