Written for The Burnside News
On the surface, selling appears to be an intellectual process: matching products and services with people who have a need for those. If there’s a match, you make a presentation – demonstrating the goodness of the fit – obtain the prospect’s commitment, deliver the product or service and get paid for your efforts. If there’s not a match, you move on.
If it were only that clear cut and that easy. First of all, in order to match products and services with people who need them, you must search out and contact those people – people who, for the most part, simply want to go about their day without being interrupted.
Then there are the gatekeepers who do their best to prevent you from actually talking to the person you’re trying to reach. And there are those instances where if you do get through to the decision-makers, you find many of them simply don’t have the desire or the time to engage in a conversation with you. Fifteen seconds into the call, they tell you to “Send me some information about your company. If I’m interested, I’ll get back to you,” and then they’re gone. Clearly, there is an emotional element to this job.
And some – perhaps many – of the people who need what you to sell, and to whom you deliver your presentation, don’t buy from you. Early in your career you hear “no” considerably more than you hear “yes.” The selling process, by its very nature, is filled with the opportunity for rejection.
How much rejection must you take? A lot if you are to thrive in the world of sales! However, you aren’t a robotic machine devoid of feelings. You’re human and you may begin to think, “What’s wrong with me?” or “What’s wrong with the prospect?”
You need to know the sales arena is an environment filled with emotions. There are the highs of closing a sale and the lows of not closing. You will encounter people who appreciate your efforts. You’ll also meet people who will have little regard for your efforts. How you interpret these events – the feelings you associate with the experiences – is entirely up to you.
You can decide to feel defeated or you can take a lesson from the experience and move on. Only you can decide.
©2012 Sandler Training Inc. (www.atlantic.sandler.com) is an international sales and management training/consulting firm. For a free copy of Why Salespeople Fail And What To Do About It, call the Sandler Training at 902-468-0787 or email salescareers@sandler.com
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