Conquering Sales Fears: Turning Rejection into Opportunity

What if your fear of rejection is the only thing holding you back from closing more deals? Join us as we unravel the complex emotions tied to a career in sales and promise actionable solutions to common obstacles. Master strategies to handle the fear of making cold calls, learn how to reframe rejection into opportunities for meaningful conversations, and understand the importance of setting realistic quotas to stay motivated and on track. This episode not only tackles the dread of asking for business but also offers practical techniques for handling objections and ensuring client satisfaction.

Discover why a staggering 80% of salespeople hesitate to ask for the business and how simple, non-pushy techniques can dramatically improve your closing rates. We break down the critical role of understanding client needs and the necessity of honest dialogue to clear up any misunderstandings. Plus, for those aiming to elevate their sales game even further, we recommend an online training course packed with in-depth guidance. Tune in to conquer your sales fears and unlock new levels of success!

Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Sales Fears and Rejection
• 9:02 Sales Fear and Achieving Success
• 18:05 Maximizing Sales Potential

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

So something I probably don't need to tell you is that sales can be a very stressful occupation to have. Now. It may be your main occupation, maybe a salesperson in an organization, or maybe it's just part of what you do. So you might have your own business and probably you would much rather be doing whatever your core business is, but sales is an important aspect of keeping the business going. If you don't have any sales, you don't have a business. So, whichever way you cut it, it is quite a stressful, or certainly can be quite a stressful, thing to have to do, and I like to do research.

Speaker 1: 0:51

I like to see and talk to people about what they're doing with cells, what their fears are in particular, and five of the top fears are the five that I'll go through in a moment, and this is what I thought I'd talk about in this particular podcast and maybe talk a little bit about how you can handle those fears, because although techniques can be very handy, you sort of fundamentally have to get underneath that and recognize that this is just part and parcel of what sales is. So the five fears that I have here are fear of calling, so as in picking up a phone and making a telephone call to somebody fear of rejection, fear of asking for the business, fear of missing your quota or your target, and fear of having a no someone saying no to you and we could also look at that as a fear of objections. So objections are definitely a part of sales and with all of these, it's really important that you find a way to deal with them, because if you can't, the chances are that your sales career is going to be very short. So pick up with, or start with, the fear of calling. The kind of things that may be going through your head are simply that you don't want to bother people, you don't want to take up their time, you don't want to waste their time. So one of the important ways to handle this is certainly to have a basic technique, a basic approach, and that can be as simple as when somebody answers the call.

Speaker 1: 2:31

If this is a call out of the blue, just ask for a few moments of their time if it's convenient. Now look, some people will shut you down. That's just going to happen, and it may well be that these people will never buy from you. It may also be that you have to work on these people a little bit. So I always like to ask if they have a minute or two to speak to me. I have something I believe will be of use to them. If it isn't convenient right now, is there another time when I could perhaps call them back. So if you're going to do that, never let them call you back. So this is just one of the important things.

Speaker 1: 3:07

You do need to retain control of this interaction. You need to be deciding when it happens. If you wait for your client to call you back on a straight cold call like that, it's highly likely they won't Probably a lot of the time, because they have no intention of calling back or it may simply be that they forget. But whatever the reason, if they're not calling you back, you're then basically out of control of that sale and as salespeople we need to remain in control of at least the parts we can control as much as possible. So I always treat people with respect, and it's respectful when you call somebody out of the blue just to ask if they have time.

Speaker 1: 3:50

I've had a lot of salespeople cold call me and they just go straight into their pitch and sometimes you can't even get a word in, and on those occasions I'll try and stop them. But if they keep on talking and there's a reason why people do that but if they keep on talking, I'll just hang up because they're clearly not interested in me, because it's a one-way conversation, they're just talking at me. The reason that people do approach their calls this way and you may well recognize this is simply the fears that I'm talking about. They fear that if they stop talking, the client's going to say no, I don't want to talk to you, or no, this isn't a good time, or no, I'm not interested. All of these kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 4:34

And one of the important things to recognize, particularly about cold calls, where your client is completely cold, and by that I mean they've no idea who you are, they've no idea what your product is, everything is completely new to them. The chances are you will get turned down more times than the person will give you the time to speak to them. So just be prepared for that, because stone cold leads are the hardest to convert into anything. And the other thing to understand as well is that your expectations have to be realistic. On a stone cold call, I would not expect to make a sale. What I would be looking to do is to open a dialogue, maybe to send them some information and then follow up. So you're building credibility, you're showing that you know what you're talking about. It may be to try and arrange an appointment to meet with them, but even that might be pushing it.

Speaker 1: 5:32

So a couple of things about this. When you call somebody, treat them with respect. Be aware that the chances are you will get turned down as a probability or statistically, you're probably more likely to get a no than to get a yes. And don't treat this as trying to make a sale over the phone, because someone who's stone cold is very unlikely to buy from you. You basically have a very high level of buyer resistance and you can't possibly make a sale until you've broken that down, and that takes time to do that.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Is that the reason you're calling, or I hope the reason that you're calling this person is that you believe that you can offer them something that will add value to their life. So, in other words, whether it's a product or a service that you're offering, you've identified this person as being your avatar, being your ideal client. So you know that there's a very high probability that you can offer them something that will be of benefit to them. Now you might want to you certainly want to in fact talk about that aspect fairly early on in the conversation. Don't do it at great length, but just the it's kind of a headline level. You know just two or three sentences at the top to explain what it is that you do and why you would hope that would be of interest to them. So you need to think that side of it through and that will be very specific to what you're doing. But if you know that you're adding value, if you know that this is the kind of potential client that you can provide a good solution for, that means you're basically there to help them and that also will take some of the pressure off. If you make it all about you, about making this call, making this sale, all of that stuff, that's where you'll tend to pile the pressure on. Okay, so that's fear of calling.

Speaker 1: 7:30

The next one is fear of rejection, and this is very similar to what I've already spoken about, and the bottom line is we all fear rejection to one extreme or another. So it's certainly not pleasant to be rejected by people in any walk of life, whether it's potential friendships or you know really anything you can think of. Nobody likes to be rejected, and the truth is that in sales, rejection is just part of it. This comes with the job. You will be rejected by people and rejected. You really need to learn how to handle it. So a good first step is to understand that it's not personal. You might be rejected for all sorts of reasons. You might have got the wrong person. They might not be interested in what you're doing at all. You might have caught them at a bad time where they've got something else going on and they really don't have the space to look at what it is you're offering, even if it's something useful. There are many, many reasons, and sometimes what you can do is just to follow up with something like an email or a letter, something that you can send to them and then give you a reason to make a follow-up call if you think they are somebody worth considering. So, really, the key thing with rejection you're going to have to accept that once you move into sales, that will most definitely happen, and I think the most important thing to do is not to take it personally, not to make it a personal thing.

Speaker 1: 9:02

Okay, the third question is fear of asking for the business. So this is, in many ways something. In some ways it's quite funny, I guess, but in other ways it's quite scary, because I read a statistic. Now I have forgotten the actual statistic, but I can give you a rough idea of what it was. This was a study I believe it was taken in the United States a few years ago, and it was the number of salespeople who were surveyed who not only were frightened of asking for the business but actually wouldn't. They were sort of frightened to the point where they wouldn't ask for the business, they'd just keep on talking. It was in the region of 80% of the people who were surveyed. So that's four out of five people actually aren't asking for the business. So you can look at that two or two ways if you like, but the first way is that if you're doing that, if that is something you tend to do well, you're not alone. So there may be some comfort in that. On the other hand, it means that if you are prepared to ask for the business and you are competing with other companies, the chances are that you're the one in five people who will ask for the business and the others won't. Now the statistic that complemented that and again, this is going to be rough and the number is probably wrong, but the ballpark will be about right.

Speaker 1: 10:31

Something in the order of 70% of the buyers who it surveyed said that they were sitting there waiting for the salesperson to ask for the business so they could get it moving. Get it done, move on. So that's the other thing to remember. You might be caught up in your own fears about asking for the business and possibly getting rejected, all of that stuff, but at the other side of the table from you, that person might be sitting there just waiting for you to get on with it and ask for the business so they can get things moving. So if that is one of the fears you suffer from, you really have to just step up. I mean, that's what separates salespeople from people who might be in customer support or anything else.

Speaker 1: 11:17

The salesperson, your job, basically, is to ask for the business. So if you are doing sales because you have your own business and you would much rather be doing something else, just remember that when you're doing the sales, you don't have to be pushy, it doesn't have to be sleazy all of those kind of negative images we have of salespeople. It doesn't have to be anything like that it can be the continuation of what hopefully is a pleasant conversation, and it can be, using a phrase as simple as is there anything else you need to know before we start on the paperwork, or are you happy to go ahead on the basis of everything we've spoken about? So these are quite soft closes. You're not. You don't have somebody's arm pinned up behind their back or anything like that. You don't have somebody's arm pinned up behind their back or anything like that, and you're not putting yourself out there a huge amount. These are quite soft questions to ask. They're a natural part of a presentation or a sales discussion and they can make the difference between getting the business and not getting it. And I'm not joking about that part, because some buyers might just get really frustrated with you because you won't ask for the business. They'll just go with somebody else. So don't get caught up on that one. I know it's one that a lot of salespeople struggle with, as I've said, but honestly, when you step back from it and look at the statistics and some very simple closing techniques, there's no reason why it should be a showstopper for you.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Okay, number four is fear of missing quota or missing your target, and this is obviously a very legitimate fear. It's something every salesperson has had to deal with. I've certainly had to deal with it in my career quite a lot, and I think one of the issues around sales, particularly if you're in a sales team, is that everybody knows how everybody else is doing. So if you're on target or over target, everybody knows and you can feel pretty good about it. But if you're way below target, way below quota also, everybody knows and you might feel you're the person who's letting the team down, particularly if everybody else is on target or exceeding their target and you're the one person who isn't. So it's certainly a real fear. What can you do about it?

Speaker 1: 13:39

Well, in terms of the fear, I think, first of all, recognize it could be legitimate. Try and put it in some perspective. Yeah, it may be that you're going to look like you're not as good. There might be a loss of face to some extent. Are you likely to lose your job? Obviously, if this carries on for an extended period and you're an employee, then obviously one of the outcomes may be the business fault, and there's a well-known statistic and I can't remember that one either, but it's something about the number of businesses that fail in the first 12 months. I think it's around a third. Certainly, in the first three years, that number goes up.

Speaker 1: 14:26

So in order to not be one of those businesses, it's really important to understand where you are in relation to quota. Now, it may be that you've set an unrealistic quota and the quota is driven by a number of factors. It can be the potential market for your product or solution, wherever it is you're selling it. Obviously, you'll have overheads that you need to cover. Your own salary. That needs to be covered. So there are overhead costs that need to be covered, because it's one thing hitting quota, but certainly if you've got your own business, you need to be profitable as well. So if you've got an unrealistically low quota, it may be that you can hit it, but by the time you've taken all your overheads out, there's no money left. So all these kind of things are things you really need to be on top of.

Speaker 1: 15:15

If you're a business owner or if you're the person setting the quotas, if you're not hitting quota, it's really important that you start looking at where it's all going wrong. So this comes down to understanding your sales process. By that I mean what is the journey that a potential customer, potential client, will go through from the place of not knowing who you are to the place of being a happy customer. What are the steps? Which bits are you involved with and how good are you at each one of those? So you need to step back and critique it, get numbers against it, because most people, if they don't know their numbers, they tend to be very optimistic about what they are and they're pretty much always wrong in the. You know they're not actually doing anywhere near as well as they think they are. So it is really important to understand your numbers and from that you can begin to look at where are your weak areas as a salesperson, and they're the areas to then focus on. And if you can increase those, even by a factor of 10%, that can make a huge difference to the number of orders you can book. So fear of missing quota is definitely genuine fear. So it does come down to looking at where you're going wrong. Are you talking to the right people? Are you looking for clients in the right area, whether that's online or physically? Do you know your sales process? Do you know what your conversion rates are at each stage in the process? So all of these things are very important.

Speaker 1: 16:49

The final fear I'm going to talk about briefly is the fear of getting a no, and I've kind of included that as also the fear of getting an objection. Now, no's and objections are interesting things because they can feel like it's the end of, or. I think where the fear comes from is that people think that's the end of the deal. You've just lost the deal at that point when you get a no or you get an objection, but, frankly, in most cases it isn't what it is, though, the client has missed something. If you've been doing your qualification process correctly and you've had the correct conversation with the client, as you've been having your meeting or meetings, so you're getting a much clearer understanding of what they need. You're showing them how you can meet those needs.

Speaker 1: 17:43

If you have done each of those steps correctly, there's a chance you might still get a note, for whatever reason. It may simply be timing, or it might be something else. Well, usually, though, it means the client has not understood something. They have not understood something about the benefit, and hence the value to them, of whatever it is you're offering. Just exploring that. Have a chat to them about it.

Speaker 1: 18:05

Okay, it seemed to me we're a good fit. So perhaps you could let me know why you're, why you think we're not, and go into that, because it allows you to eliminate the possibility that, in fact, you are a good match, but just something has got missed in that conversation, in in the process of discussing how your solution will suit your client. So that's all I'm going to say on these things. Obviously, you need to get into specifics, which you can't do because this is a very general podcast. As you'll know, I do online. There's an online training course which obviously covers off all of these things and a lot more, and what I also do is give you a lot of techniques to handle these, so I give you specific ways of dealing with some of these approaches. I've already shared some on this podcast with you, so hopefully you can at least apply what I've shared here and see if that works for you. Okay, so that is it for now, and I will speak to you again on the next podcast. So bye for now.