Never afraid to miss
Believe in You!
One of the biggest reasons that salespeople fail is that they lose their self-belief. Even experienced salespeople have times when they doubt themselves and lose the belief that they can sell. Most if not all salespeople experience it at sometimes. I have had times over my career when I wondered why and what the hell I was doing in a sales job after I lost a sale I expected to win or lost a customer who I thought was ours for a long long time.
It is a downward spiral and you become your own worst enemy. You start to believe you have lost your sales skills, talents and abilities and start to think that you can’t do this job or win another sale again. You can become like a centre forward who is in a goal drought, you start to get edgy and get frightened to do those sales activities that came natural to you.
The average centre forward in a goal drought starts to pass the ball to a colleague instead of shooting. As a salesperson you may avoid asking hard questions or asking for the business in order to remove the possibility of rejection.
What you have got to remember is when a customer says no or you lose a sale you thought you would win it is not the end of the world or your career. It only means that at that particular moment in time the customer has decided to say no or has decided to give the business to someone else.
It doesn’t mean your customer will say no forever. You have got to put it to one side and remind yourself how many times you have turned a no into a yes or the number of times you have won business against the odds. This reminder will rebuild and restore belief in your own sales skills and abilities.
I think it was Malcolm Macdonald (Supermac) the old Newcastle number nine who had an autobiography titled ‘Never afraid to miss’. Think like the best centre forwards if you miss a chance don’t worry too much as another one will come along soon and you are the best at putting that chance successfully in the back of the net.
As Mark Victor Hansen quoted
“Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but first you have to believe”
