You know that feeling you get when you’re about to make a call and your heart starts pounding? That’s called fear of rejection in sales, and it can be crippling. Fear is the number one reason why people give up on their dreams of being successful salespeople. I don’t want this to happen to you. So let me give you proven ways to overcome fear of rejection in sales so that we can both live out our dreams!
Understand What Rejection Means
What does rejection mean actually? Rejection is simply negative feedback from a prospect that causes you to change your approach in sa.
These are some ways to overcome fear of rejection in sales:
- 1) List Your Fears
- 2) Do The Math
- 4) Practice, practice, practice
- 5) Visualize positive outcomes, not negative outcomes
- 6) Rationalize the benefit of your product or service
Step 1. List Your Fears of Selling
Get familiar with your fear of selling. List everything that you think will go wrong during your sales attempts—no matter how silly or unlikely.
List all of your fears, for example here are some common fears:
- Not knowing what to say
- Remembering past rejections and thinking the same thing will happen
- Fear of asking for the
- Fear of bothering people
- And more
There are many many fears with sales and to get past them, you first have to realize them.
Then, for each item, ask yourself these three questions:
- How likely is it to happen?
- What are the real-life consequences if this were to happen?
- If I were the type of person who wasn’t afraid of this, how would I act?
Write down your answers to each question and read them as much as you need to. It helps to write them every morning before your sales calls. This will help you get in a winning mindset for the rest of the day.
The goal is to identify the root cause for each of these fears and then replace the root fears with positive thoughts.
Do this for every single fear.
Do The Math
Do the math and look at how many calls you need to get a meeting and how many meetings you need to get a sale. Know your numbers for every sales metric. Always remember your numbers so that you can keep perspective when you get multiple rejections in a row for cold calls or multiple sales meetings in a row without a closed deal.
Rejection is a Numbers Game
It’s important to remember that rejection in sales, just like in any other business endeavor, is all about the numbers game. The more you do it, the less scary it becomes and the higher your chances are of succeeding.
Practice, Practice Practice
Practice makes perfect. The more you practice for sales calls, the less scared you will be.
Things to practice:
- Practice your sales scripts
- Practice responses to objections
- Practice your unique value propositions
- Practice saying your customer testimonials or success stories
Practice does really make perfect. The more you practice, the less stressful your sales call will be. When you practice, the right words will come out of your mouth even when you are feeling stressed or nervous. Practice makes perfect!
Practice Sales Scripts + Practice Objections = Success
A well-practiced sales script is one of the best ways to lessen anxiety when it comes to rejection in sales.
If you know what you’re going to say before a call and a bad situation comes up, you will be so much more equipped to handle it when you already practiced.
Visualize The Positive outcomes
Your brain is hardwired to dwell on worst-case scenarios. This can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. After all, when you spend your energy thinking about all the bad things that might happen, you might trick yourself into thinking that success is not possible. Focusing on negative outcomes can also stop you dead in your tracks, and prevent you from taking the steps that are crucial for your success. Focus on the outcomes you want, not the outcomes you don’t want!
The brain naturally gravitates toward negative thoughts, so you need to actively force yourself to visualize the positive outcomes.
Some ideas on how you can visualize positive outcomes:
- Visualize your sales call going well. Picture yourself as a confident, calm and assertive individual from the start to finish of every single call.
- Imagine that you are in control of the conversation and how it proceeds
- Visualize a successful sale and how it will make your customer happy
- Visualize the new money in your pocket after this commission check clears
Visualizing what’s going right is an important way of setting up for success.
Rationalize the benefit of your product or service and how much it can change your prospects business
This is hugely helpful in letting go of your fears. How much impact does your product or service make to your company’s bottom line? This is something you can find out through questioning.
Get that dollar amount in your mind, that exact amount. There is a good chance that that amount is much higher than what you are charging.
As long you are providing more value than what you are charging, you can rest easy knowing that your product or service deserves to be in the hand
Think of Yourself In Service-Not As A Seller
You have to start thinking of yourself in service. You are servicing your clients, not selling them. They NEED your product or service.
This is where you will find the most success, and this is when fear of rejection in sales starts to disappear.
It takes time, but your prospects’ needs for your product or service are a need that must be met.
When they see how it can help them reach their goals, then your anxieties will start going away.
Don’t forget to provide value!
Whatever it is that you are selling, make sure that the prospect sees how your product or service will help them meet their goals.
This is where fear of rejection in sales starts to disappear. You have a purpose and a goal-oriented mindset with each client interaction because they need something from you.
Wrap Up
The fear of rejection simply comes because you are in the wrong mindframe. There are many things that can be done to overcome fear of rejection in sales. From visualization, to rationalizing the benefits and seeing your product or service as a necessary part of someone’s life—there is always something you can do.
Whatever it takes for you personally, just know there is no shortage of options when overcoming this
Use these strategies to get in the right mindset and overcome fear of rejection in sales.