(By Loyd Ford) The door is closed. No way in. Sometimes, that door might even be shut right in your face. That’s sales. People don’t really want to be sold. But why is that what we focus on? Oh, I know. We focus on it because we fear and feel that more than success.
Well, we feel it more than success if we’re not careful.
Learning to control your emotions is powerful. It’s also very challenging to accomplish. After all, when you find yourself in situations with uncertain outcomes – sales – you can be overwhelmed by your fears more easily.
But what if you could change that?
By the way, even once you come to understand the importance of controlling your fears and all of your emotions, it’s not easy to accomplish. However, more important than the idea of controlling your fears is perhaps the idea of practicing behaviors that make you feel that you are more in control of the outcome.
I’m appealing for you to try something.
- Always start your process by listening, researching, developing, and testing a strategy to build your “opportunity engine” in sales. Once you recognize you can always produce more opportunities, you won’t feel failure; you’ll feel the likelihood of success. That within itself is a powerful change inside you.
- When you have fear inside you, always consider going on the offensive. Going on the offensive takes the power from your fear and allows you to develop joy and overcome your fear. Being on the offensive puts you in charge.
- When bad things happen, don’t treat it as bad news. Consider that what others consider “bad news” should be a checkmark on a list of activities that ultimately end in your success. No one knows the future. That means that your temporary outcome is unlikely the end of the story. Why allow it to sack you emotionally?
- Consider your superpower to be consistency, using math to boost your regular sales activities and staying even in the ups and downs that are known to happen regularly in sales. We all like to have sales success, but your real success comes directly from your consistent sales activities. The buying isn’t up to you. Your activity is.
- Remember that psychology and bias are critical in your ability to stomach the turbulence you regularly see in sales. Humans are frail. It’s foolish not to accept you are one of them and plan accordingly. If you are allowing your presets to victimize you, change your mind. Anyone can change.
Some of the best advice I’ve ever heard is, “Just keep going.” That might seem simple and may not even seem like advice to you, but it’s actually wisdom about living. In sales, it is about your activity more than any other factor. Be the ball. Stay in motion. Constantly reassess your goal and keep going.
Fear can stop you.
…if you allow it.
Doors shut in your face. So what?
A shut door is only a checkmark.
Always develop your plan by first being aware of your fear. See it as temporary and maybe not even true, then build a strategy to overcome that fear and “just keep going.”
Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or [email protected]. Read Loyd’s Radio Ink archives here.
