Every individual has his own skills. Some people are really hard working and can handle any job simply by chugging away at it for an extended period of time. Some people are creative and use creativity to make any job interesting. Some people have great people skills and can convince others of virtually anything under the sun by simply making them like them. However, there are a lot of people out there that are private, introverted, and don’t have the natural charm to make people like them. These individuals, naturally, are very scared of selling.
As is obvious, these types of individuals never really enter any field that involves selling such as marketing. More often than not, because these people are scared of selling, they also end up shelving their entrepreneurial plans. After all, establishing and running a business requires the entrepreneur to be capable of selling. So, fear of selling can be a major obstacle for many up and coming entrepreneurs.
Are you one of these individuals who are so scared of selling that they don’t take the next step in life? Are you an individual who has set aside his dream of owning a company simply because he is scared of selling? If you are, then it’s high time that you dealt with this problem. Here are some suggestions from us folks at Office Hacks by Inkjet Wholesale.
Understand Why You’re Scared of Selling
The reason why you’re scared of selling is that you’re scared of failure. In the majority of cases, fear of selling boils down just fear of failure because when you sell, you have to put yourself out there. Selling, inherently, requires the individual to make his position known to the other individual. What follows is the seller trying to convince the other individual to not buy the product but to buy his opinion of it.
For example, if you were selling a cake. You would tell the individual how yummy it is, how its ingredients are right, and how there isn’t a better cake around. All of these statements or “benefits” of the product are opinion. The problem is that most people are so attached to their opinions that they see them as an extension of themselves. So, when the potential buyer doesn’t buy the opinion, people end up seeing it as the individual not buying into their personality.
These people view a “no” in selling business as an invalidation of who they are and what they believe in, even if they don’t believe in the product in question. Thus, there are numerous small tasks of selling since the process starts anew with every new lead. Consequently, there are numerous instances where the seller’s self-esteem can take a hit.
Effectively, if you’re scared of selling, you’re essentially protecting your self-esteem. As in the case of most fears, the moment you understand why you’re scared of selling, the fear loses its teeth. The reason for this is that by understanding your fear, you rationalise it and rationalised concepts are rarely ever scary.
Change Your Perception of Rejection
Understanding why you’re scared of selling will set you on the path to changing your perception of rejection. It will allow you to equate your fear of selling with your fear of rejection. Once you know that you’re scared of selling because you’re scared of rejection, you can actually go about nullifying it. The trick to this is to change your perception of rejection itself.
Rejection is nothing but a chance for you to realise what doesn’t work. If ‘x’ technique didn’t work on a potential buyer, then maybe you need to try ‘y’. It is similar the trial and error method in science and maths. In other words, you can start seeing that rejection as something you can learn from and a way to improve.
The best salespeople in the world will view this rejection as more positive than an acceptance. These are individuals who don’t equate their sales pitch or their product with their personal selves. They keep them separate and, hence, manage to see rejection as a vehicle of education. You need to do the same if you want to move beyond your fear of selling.
Sell a Product or Service That You Have Faith In
Selling requires conviction and conviction requires commitment. Unfortunately, you can’t commit to any cause, product, or service, unless you’re convinced of it yourself. There are a lot of ideas, products, concepts, and services out there. You, yourself, would have many ideas about your start-up. Most of them wouldn’t be feasible or beneficial to the prospect. Thus, most of them you wouldn’t be able to sell convincingly.
This time, the trick is to find something worth selling. You need a product or service that you can have faith in. If your faith in your product or service, then you would be free from all doubts. This is important because doubt also plays an important role in fear. In simplest of terms, if you doubt the effectiveness of what you’re selling, then you’ll be scared of selling it because you’ll be scared of being found out.
Don’t Create Demand, Cater To A Need
There are two ways through which businesses are run. In the first, a business creates a product or service to cater to an existing need of the audience while in the other; the business creates a product first and then creates a demand for it in the target audience through marketing. The latter, as is obvious, much harder to sell.
More poignantly, people who are scared of selling, tend to view selling as of the latter type. After all, how difficult will it be to sell water to a tourist in the desert or even a warm drink to someone in the tundra? What the lesson here is that if you’re scared of selling, then you should look to cater to an existing need as opposed to creating a product and then creating a demand for it.
Put All Your Eggs in One Basket and Dive Right In
Have you ever heard the idiom, “necessity is the mother of invention”? Well, it is very appropriate to your fear of selling. If you don’t have any other options, you’ll do anything to survive. It is the backup plans that keep people from being fully devoted to what they’re doing at any point in time.
Therefore, if you truly want to stop being scared of selling and realise your entrepreneurial dreams, then you simply need to put all your eggs in one basket and commit to it. This means taking your idea, conceptualising it, strategising for it, and implementing it, irrespective of how scared of selling you may be.
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