Obstacles in the way of selling.

As is the cases with all activities in life, there will be obstacles and sales is no different, it comes with its own set of obstacles, and the worst of these obstacles are the ones which are made by us in our minds.

We have all seen it in movies on TV that a salesman is not really the most loved person out there, hes usually a person on whom the potential customer shut closes the door, find ways to escape from, hangs up the phone, responds rudely. Usually seen as  person selling detergent & vacuum cleaners. And lets be honest we all have found ourselves doing the same at a point or another in life.

After all this media influence on our mind and our past actions ("what you sow is what you get" in action) we immediately develop this fear because this time around we are the salesman here. This fear can be so intense that it can send chill down your spine.This fear is called the fear of rejection.

The question arises how to deal with this. Well pretty simply register it into your mind weather you like it or not, now that you are in the sales position you have to deal with you have to do it, you have to either face it and overcome it or you will loose your job, your business will not sell and isn't that even more scarier.

That's easier said than done but really in order to over come it you have to do it, If you just walk down the street/corridor of commercial building and knock the first door and you are trying to sell something, chances of all the above fears becoming a reality are very high and that will be very depressing not a nice feeling and it will put you in a retreat mode and perhaps you will loose out more on your confidence. 

However to deal with this one of the most important thing to do tell your self that "Yes am ready to accept a rejection" and take a deep breath every time you approach the next door. This approach will help you might be able to sell on a once in every 5 doors. But this will burn you quickly you will be putting in a lot of effort and getting very little result, which will be a very demotivating. 

The professional approach

A rather professional and an effective approach will be to look at sales from a process perspective, its about breaking down sales into smaller steps from lead generation to cold calling to qualifying a lead, to meeting, to opportunity, to proposal / quote, to negotiation, to delivery and finally after sales support. There are many ways to generate leads there are immense resources like directories social media, referrals, internet etc for this. Once you have a lead at hand, its about time to do your call to the customer mostly this will be a cold call, here is where you will face your fear and to deal with it practice a few mock calls with your friends/colleagues have a crisp introduction and to the point sales pitch and once done ask for interest or meeting to take it further. Do this a couple of times and you will feel confident about it. Yes don't forget to take a deep breath before every call and wear smile even on the phone (trust me it makes a difference).

The benefit of adopting the professional approach is that you will not only make more successful sales but it will help you identify the source of your fear, this fear may be a combinations of multiple steps of sales or it might be focused on a single step in all cases you will know it and you will be able to tackle it. It also important to keep in mind that you must have in depth knowledge about what you are selling and utmost belief in your product only then will you have the courage to sell it and also have the strength to face any objection raised by the customer.

One thing no matter what people say or how people generalize a sales person, keep in mind that a sales person is one of the most critically important resource of any business because after the initial capital runs out, business run on the money which the sales bring in.

"When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives."
          - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

A bit about my experience on my first sale, it really wasn't a rock star performace but it was back in late 2003 or early 2004 am not very sure about that, I had 2 old miserably used mobile phones which I wanted to sell and addin a little bit more money to it and buy myself a new phone it was purely personal it was not a job but what it taught me helped me trough out my sales career. 

There is a place in Jeddah - Saudi Arabia, called mobile market and all you get to see over there is nothing but shops selling mobile phones and people buying mobile phones. The first shop I walked into, I had such an intense fear of rejection that I mumbled a few words to the shop keeper and some how he figured it out words such as sell mobile (Hopefully) he was  a nice guy he said so you want to sell old mobiles I told him yes he asked me to have a look at it however he didn't find value in them he offered a very low price I rejected and walked out. However I really needed to make money hence I walked into another shop and went into around 4 more and the experience was very bad and embarrassing that am not able to talk I just told myself that i have to do it I have to sell these off no matter what and then I entered the next shop, took a deep breath and spoke the words properly quoted the price am looking for, negotiated and sold the first phone in the second shop and the other phone in the fifth. What I learned was I need to have courage and not be shy while selling, "I am here to sell not to ask for a favor". 

I hope the above text was interesting and of value to you. Please post your tips and experiences in the comments.

In my next post I will be talking about retail sales.

Until then Happy Selling.

"Selling is not about asking for a favor. Selling is offering value in exchange of money"

      - Farhan Sikander

Photo credit: Laura Gillmore /Flickr