Getting Rid of Your Internal Conflicts about Selling

Getting Rid of Your Internal Conflicts about Selling

Many people in sales have internal conflicts about selling. These internal conflicts frequently take place through internal dialog or self-talk that can run like continuous tape loops:

“I never thought I would be a salesperson!”

“I hate being a product pusher!”

“I hate all of this rejection and all these ‘no’s’ I hear in selling!”

Internal conflicts about selling can cost you tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income from lost sales.

EVEN IF YOU HAVE BEEN THROUGH A LOT OF SALES TRAINING, IF YOU HAVE INNER CONFLICTS ABOUT SELLING, YOU WON’T USE THE SALES TECHNIQUES YOU LEARNED IN TRAINING!

The problem is even worse for professionals like financial planners and lawyers who DON’T see themselves as salespeople but, in this increasingly competitive world, DO have to sell and market themselves and their firms to achieve success.

Some financial advisors and attorneys leave millions of dollars in lifetime income on the table because they never learn how to overcome their internal conflicts about sales. It is a big problem.

How can you begin to get rid of your conflicts about sales and marketing?

1. Stop reading or listening to people who are anti-sales or anti-marketing. Their pitter-patter sounds so reassuring, “Don’t be a salesperson. Be a trusted advisor.” My questions: Why can’t you be both? Why can’t you be a PERSUASIVE trusted advisor?

Some of the anti-sales salespeople will tell you, “Just be yourself! You don’t need scripts! You don’t need to be prepared to handle client objections. You’ll think of something to say. Just be yourself!”

In my experience, every sales millionaire works very hard on his or her presentations. Like great professionals in any field, top sales professionals are prepared for anything and they can handle any situation.

This takes exquisite preparation!

Always remember that at their core, the anti-sales salespeople are trying to sell YOU something! Frequently they are trying to sell you a very expensive coaching program on “How to be a Trusted Advisor” or “Why You Don’t Have to Sell to be Successful.” They are selling, selling, selling but they don't want you to be able to sell! How hypocritical!

2. Do not invest your time or energy in people who are anti-business or who are against the free enterprise system.  I am seeing more and more of these people on LinkedIn and elsewhere. They are free to have their own opinions but those opinions can destroy your ability to have a healthy mindset about selling. They could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income. They will not only make you sales phobic they will make you feel guilty about becoming a successful business owner.

These people are toxic and you should stay as far away from them as possible.

They would actually do you less harm if they just stole your wallet instead of destroying your healthy beliefs about sales and marketing.

3. Spend time with highly successful people, senior executives of highly successful companies, and top professionals in almost any field. Almost all of these people have a deep respect for their salespeople. Top executives and highly successful professionals have a reverence for sales and marketing.

I have worked with the Presidents of big companies like Blue Cross/Blue Shield and with senior executives at brokerage firms, insurance companies, pension funds and banks. I have worked with owners of small companies and with entrepreneurs. I have never heard one of these people brag about low sales! They ALL want high sales numbers and they have a deep respect for their top salespeople.

BECOME a person these company presidents and top executives respect: become a great, ethical sales professional!

Hang out with these winners (or take them out to lunch or dinner) and absorb all of their healthy positive attitude about sales!

As a Ph.D. Psychologist, I can tell you--That is therapeutic!

4. Stop criticizing salespeople. You can criticize what they are offering (it may not be the best solution) and you can criticize the way they are selling it (especially if they are making misrepresentations about the product or service) but don't criticize the very fact that they are trying to make a living by marketing a product or service they probably very much believe in.

As a professional speaker and trainer, I attend a number of conferences and workshops and often listen to the presentations of other speakers. At a boot camp for financial advisors, I was listening to a fascinating speaker who offered a great deal of practical and useful information. My fingers were cramped from all the notes I took. At the end of his talk, he spoke for a couple of minutes about a program he was offering that would teach financial advisors even more. Yes, he spent a couple of minutes selling a program he had.

The guy sitting next to me said, "That guy is nothing but a salesman." I couldn't believe my ears. I noticed that the guy sitting next to me took almost no notes! All he could focus on was the brief sales presentation at the very end of this valuable talk. He missed the tremendous value of all the information that preceded this brief sales presentation!

I later learned that the person sitting next to me was an unsuccessful financial advisor with a very small practice. No wonder--with an anti-sales attitude like that!

5. Praise salespeople who help you. Thank them for their expertise and service. Look for the good in sales professionals and you will find plenty of it. When you praise other sales professionals, you will then feel much better about your own sales efforts.

We are all in this together. It is a brotherhood, it is a sisterhood. Many of us must sell or market a product or service to grow our business or sustain our business or livelihood. Support and praise other great ethical sales professionals--they are your business brothers and sisters.

6. As surprising as it seems, welcome rejection. Yes, rejection is painful, but we all experience it. Elon Musk has fierce critics. John Bogle has had many critics over the years. Even Warren Buffet has had critics. As painful as it is, rejection means you are getting your message out.

No matter how great your message, product or service is, some people will reject it! That is just a fact of life. ACCEPT IT and move on the next prospect who may be someone who loves you and loves your product or service!

The person who sits in his office waiting for the phone to ring or waiting for his or her website to bring in clients experiences very little rejection and also gains very few customers or clients!

If you speak to 100 prospects each quarter in seminars and personal meetings, a certain number will reject you. If you speak with 1,000, you will have an even larger number who will say, "no," and a few of them may even be rude about it. The more people you talk with and meet with each quarter, the more rejection you will get AND more customers and clients you will get!

Don't let negative people get you down. You will encounter them! But you will also encounter many, many more positive people who will see the incredible value of what you offer. The more sales and marketing you do and the more effective marketing you do, the more positive and receptive people you will encounter. Many of these will become your customers or your clients for decades!

7. Control your self-talk. Instead of telling yourself, "I hate to sell and I hate being a salesperson," tell yourself, "I love to sell. I love meeting people and making new friends. I love helping people find better solutions, better products and better services!"

There is much more to learn about developing positive mindsets towards selling. Only a small percentage of that can be learned from passively reading articles.

Many of the most productive sales mindsets are like athletic skills--you can only learn them from practice and with the help of a skilled coach. You can't learn to hit a 90 mph fastball by reading a book and you can't acquire the most powerful sales and marketing skills just by reading about them. (If you could, then almost everyone would be making $500,000 a year or more).

If you are serious about acquiring your dream customers and dream clients and building your dream business, enroll in sales and marketing seminars and workshops and invest in hiring a great sales and marketing coach.

If you engage in the seven actions above, you will be on your way to developing a much more positive mindset toward sales and marketing and your sales and income will increase.

The odds are that you are probably doing most non-sales things right in your business. You probably have outstanding products and services (at least as good as those of your competitors). You probably have pretty good technology in your office.

It is likely that you are honest, ethical and friendly.

And, you probably care deeply about your customers and clients.

What's missing? Why aren’t you more successful?

Your sales and marketing skills are not as good as they should be!

The most exciting news of all is that you can fix that!

Once you finally learn how to sell and market effectively and once you develop a healthy mindset toward selling, you'll be on your way to developing the business and the income of your dreams. I wish you great success.