Warning! Are You Running an “App” That’s Killing Your Sales Career?
Recognizing and breaking self-limiting bad habits will help you overcome your hidden fears of initiating contact.
People in all walks of life have to overcome obstacles to be successful in their field. Salespeople face unique challenges, from unqualified leads to changing market conditions to cutthroat competition. Yet for many in sales or sales-related roles, the greatest barrier to success is not around them but inside them. It’s fear.
Before you scoff or pout, read on. By “fear,” we don’t mean that you’re a business development coward, or a wimp. To the world, and even to yourself, you may appear quite fearless. But the body’s fear response often occurs at the habit level. An automatic, even unconscious reaction, you may not even realize it's happening to you. All you perceive are the results of your self-limiting habits.
Are you limiting your potential?
The echoes of fear can often be heard in the stories we tell ourselves. If you chronically avoid focusing on intentional new business development, whether it’s networking or prospecting or presenting, you may be familiar with some of these self-talk tropes:
“I don’t make sales calls because I’m not in sales. I’m a consultant.”
“I’m still in the research phase.”
“Nobody’s buying in a pandemic!”
“I'm too busy with my existing customers."
“My company’s reputation does the selling for me.”
These are excuses, although your habit-level fears may insist that they’re perfectly valid reasons. (“No, I AM too busy!”) Excuses can be incredibly persuasive, especially when they allow you to avoid doing something that seems risky or frightening.
But take a closer look. Most working adults (and stay-at-home parents!) have too much to do. Yet the most productive closer in your company has the same 24 hours in a day that you do. The difference is how they choose to prioritize their commitments. Not all of your commitments allow for flexibility, for sure. But it’s worth considering that a significant driver behind the choices you make may very well be fear.
Are you creating barriers to your own success?
How can you tell? One way is to check in with your body’s response to opportunity. It’s easy to trick the mind with stories and excuses. Some of us are masters of self-deception. But the physical plant is largely immune from mind games.
Let’s say you had a chance meeting with a critical decision-maker at the airport last month. You’ve been putting off following up because “I’m too busy” (or the mind-reading alternative, “They’re too busy.”) Well, it’s now or never. Before you do another thing, take your phone out. Find the number. Make the call.
Faced with a similar situation, how do you typically respond? Do you go through with it? Or does your heart rate accelerate? Does your mouth go dry? Does your inner voice start a panicked internal monologue along the lines of, “What if I have to leave a voicemail? What will I say? WHAT IF HE ACTUALLY ANSWERS THE PHONE?! I can’t do this right now!”
Sound familiar? If simply thinking about calling someone you don’t know or who isn’t expecting your call causes this kind of physical response, it’s easy to see why so many of us decide we don’t have time.
You have the power to fix the glitch in your system
Calling on a prospective client or business partner isn’t an intrinsically threatening event. But if you respond negatively to the opportunity, it’s likely that something has happened that led your body to believe otherwise: A negative past experience, exposure to other people’s fears and biases, a bad dream, something. And once the fear response has been triggered, it acts like a line of bad code in an app. Every time it encounters a certain variable (like having to make a phone call), it executes the fight/flight/freeze response automatically, without any further input from you. Because it performs this function flawlessly, you may not even realize that the desired outcome (a successful contact) has been corrupted into one that is harmful to you in the long run.
The good news is that you can isolate that bad code and repair it. And the result will be an app – you – that actually functions to support your career goals. Are you ready to start earning what you're worth?
It all starts with the right diagnostic tools. We can help. Schedule an appointment today to get started!
Do you want to increase your sales revenue and build your client base?
Sign up now for our Power Up Your Sales Workshop today and you’ll learn how to:
Eliminate excuses and maximize prospecting and/or engagement activity.
Eradicate negative sales-defeating behaviors.
Clear “head trash” that is more dangerous than the current market conditions.
Find out more about BSRP’s thought-leading practices and procedures for managing Call Reluctance® and explore our range of assessments, research and sales training.
