Self Doubts
Self doubts means that you lack confidence in yourself, disbelieve, question, or suspect. Self-doubts are unpleasant because they are usually accompanied by anxiety.
Examples:
"I can't sell houses in the $750,000 + range".
"I can't sell to C level executives".
"I'll never make this quota"
The underlying dynamic is insidious, low self-esteem, "I don't deserve this much success." You pay a price for self-doubts. You protect yourself from failure by not taking risks, not trying anything new, and as a result, not making the money you would like to.
Strategies to Overcome Self Doubts
• Substitute positive affirmations. The mind cannot hold two contradictory beliefs. You cannot believe that you cannot close C level execs while believing at the same time that you can close sales at any level.
• Try these affirmations;
"I can sell C level executives"
"I deserve this sale.”
“God don't make junk"
Say them out aloud. Write them down and stick them on your desk, on your car dashboard, on your bathroom mirror. Keep a journal, identifying the times when the self doubts sneak in.
• With a trusted advisor, check out your self doubts. Is there a rational reason to believe them? Do you in reality lack the competencies to succeed? If so, get your manager to coach you or, take a training course. Identify the specific skills you need. What is the performance standard benchmark? Who among your sales team excels in this area? What is your current performance level? Set goals to close the gap. Announce your goal to the world. Reward yourself for progress, remembering that acquiring the skill will bring more sales = more commissions, more confidence, a more pleasant state to be in than self doubt. Practice skills, using audio or video taped role playing with your manager or coach.
• Sometimes the self doubts are broader and deeper and rooted in your childhood, genes or traumatic life experiences. You may have self doubts about yourself in relationships as spouse, friend, parent, or even as a worthwhile person. If this is the case and you recognize it, you have already taken the first step on the path to recovery. Your best next step is to seek professional help.
If you work on your self doubts, you will gain more confidence to tackle other challenges and learn new skills. You will also have the confidence from knowing that you have overcome a psychological barrier.
People Pleasing
People Pleasing is a dysfunctional, often unconscious and overarching goal of doing only those things that will please the customer, to the detriment of a profitable relationship. You may find it difficult to refuse an unreasonable request, or powerless to confront abusive treatment from a customer or colleague.
The underlying dynamic is that you are hiding your anxiety behind a smile. The anxiety is that the customer will be annoyed and reject you. In Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, all that Willy Loman wants is to be “well-liked”. So much so that he loses his business and ultimately his life.
People Pleasing is stressful. Because you are at the beck and call of your customers, you work long, stressful days. You give unnecessary discounts and/or free additional services which yield low profit margins and small commissions.
Strategies for Overcoming People Pleasing
• Learn to be suspicious of your motives. Am I stretching the terms of sale as an incentive to the customer to buy today, or am I doing it so that he will think of me as a nice guy? Be honest with yourself. Will the customer buy today whether or not I offer the discount?
• Learn to say "No". Examine your thinking. Are you concluding that if you say No, the customer will reject you, or are you assuming that you have no right to say No to a customer? Is saying No accompanied by anxiety, or guilt? Or is it a cool negotiating response, designed to preserve the sale and customer satisfaction but also your profit margin? If you feel uncomfortable saying No to a customer's request, buy yourself some time to think it through by telling the customer you will consider the request and get back to them. Remember, feelings interfere with effectiveness.
• Turn off that smile and fake it until you make it. Yes, a sales person should always be friendly and try to make the customer feel good about seeing him. And a smile does just that. But once it has achieved that goal for you, excessive or continual smiling is a symptom of people pleasing. Practice putting on a poker face. Consciously try not to smile when a customer or colleague says something that embarrasses or offends you.
Controlling your people pleasing will protect your profit margins, because you will not be constantly giving in to customers' unreasonable demands. Saying No regains the balance of power in the relationship and puts you back in charge of the sales process where you belong. You will also enjoy the positive good feelings about yourself that flow from respecting yourself and asserting yourself.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism means never feeling satisfied with a proposal or a sales call. The underlying dynamic is fear that if you make a mistake, your customer or sales manager will not forgive you and you will lose the sale or even your job. You put a low value on yourself or on your product or service and feel that on the outside you have to look good so that they won't suspect that on the inside there’s little of value. The price you pay for perfectionism is constantly feeling stressed. You are stressed about deadlines, preparing for sales calls, how you are dressed and groomed, the appearance of your car etc. You live in fear that you will be “found out"; that they will discover that you are a phony.
Strategies
• Stop expecting perfection of yourself. Recognize that customers, managers don't expect perfection from you. No one is perfect. In fact, it is how you handle the inevitable little glitches or big mistakes that will influence their opinion of you.
• Forgive yourself when you make a mistake. Don't panic. Don't try to hide the mistake or fix it before anyone notices. Accept that you will make mistakes and that the real challenge is to learn from them and to fix the problem. View it as a learning opportunity, not a transgression that must be punished
• Apologize for whatever responsibility you bear. But do not trust your own judgment to determine if you should apologize. Ask for advice from your manager or someone you trust, i.e. someone who has your best interests at heart. Your tendency will be to apologize for errors that are not your fault. There's a difference between apologizing to a customer on behalf of your company for the mistake your production department made, and taking personal responsibility for the mistake. If where responsibility lies is unclear, or if it lies with the customer, an apology is not necessary, but empathy is advisable.
Fear of Failure
Everyone does fail at some time, but it is a major problem only if you let one failure defeat you altogether or if it keeps you from attempting new ventures. Successful people not only have failed, but have failed frequently. However, they do not view them as failures but as learning experiences. Thomas Edison tried 99 times to invent a light bulb before he found the solution. He did not view this as 99 failures, but as 99 ways not to do it.
The faulty logic behind the fear of failure goes like this;
"Success is equal to right and therefore equal to good, while failure is equal to wrong and, as such, is bad”.
Another fear centers on the need to be unique in some way — a need to be better than others. You fear losing a sales contest or of being beaten by a competitor. Sometimes the reason you procrastinate is so that you can protect yourself if you fail. If you fail, you can rationalize that if you gave it the proper amount of time you would have succeeded. Finally there is the fear of rejection. That’s the inability to separate yourself from the product or service you are selling. You believe that when the customer rejects your product, he is rejecting you as a person.
Strategies
• Take action. Bold, decisive action. Do something scary. Fear of failure immobilizes you. To overcome this fear, you must act. When you act, act boldly.
• Ask yourself, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" What could you achieve? Be brave and just do it. If it doesn’t work out the way you want, then try something else.
• Don’t give up. Successful salespeople just don’t give up. They keep trying different approaches until they finally get the results they want. Unsuccessful sales people try one thing that doesn’t work and then give up. Often salespeople give up when they are on the threshold of succeeding.
• Don’t take failure personally. Tell yourself that failure is not a personality characteristic. Although what you do may not give you the result you wanted, it doesn’t mean you are a failure. Because you made a mistake, doesn’t mean that you are a failure.
• Ease up on yourself. If nothing else, you know what doesn’t work. Look at failure as an event or a happening, not as a judgment of you as a salesperson.
• Think of failure as a learning experience. What did you learn from the experience that will help you in the future? How can you use the experience to improve yourself or your situation? Ask yourself these questions:
o What was the mistake?
o Why did it happen?
o How could it have been prevented?
o How can I do better next time?
• Talk about it — with somebody who will listen and be neutral. Get it out — facts and feelings.
• Imagine trying to overcome the problem and falling short of the goal (failing); then figure what the worst consequences would be and what could be done about them. Then, if the worst does happen, you're at least prepared and if it doesn't, then you're relieved and probably pleasantly surprised.
• Most powerful of all - take the chance and face it. There is nothing better to reduce the fear of failure than having it happen and knowing what it can and can't do. You must face it, live through it and prove to yourself that you can survive it.
Overcoming Psychological Barriers to Success - To learn more about this author, visit John Brennan's Website.
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John Brennan
(Visit John's Website)
John Brennan Ed.D.
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A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan
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