C-Level Selling and Advanced Selling Skills
Fear Is a Sales Person's Biggest Challenge
Overcome Negative Projection and Its Debilitating Power
Fears,
excuses, uneasiness, rationalizations, intimidations all stem
from negative projection. The executive is too busy.
The executive doesn’t see salespeople. The executive
doesn’t care who they have selected. These, plus a whole
range of other statements about this executive, are excuses -
rationalizations. 99.99% of the time they are projections
that you have created either by yourself or with the help of a
blocker. An executive is too busy is an excuse. Too busy
to listen to a sales pitch - that I can agree with. Too
busy to learn how something will affect her department or job
performance - I don’t think so. Think of when your family
members come to you when you are in a hurry and ask you to sign
something. They say, “Just sign. It’s no big thing.
You don’t have to read it.” What do you do? I’ll bet
you stop and take time to read it or ask lots of questions.
Why? Probably because you know if you have to sign, you will be
held responsible. The same applies to executives.
Your services affect this executive or her people.
So too busy is
an excuse based on projection. It may be based on past
experiences or warnings from other people. The result is
that fear sets in and you need to rescue yourself. So you
rationalize. You’ve envisioned the outcome (usually
negative) so now you have something to worry about. What’s
worse about projection is that you tend to look for evidence to
support the projection. Since this becomes a focus
(conscious or unconscious), you tend to create your projection.
You call and get rejected. “See I told you she was too
busy.” Maybe you didn’t have anything to say that
interested her, but your approach is, “Don’t let me disturb
you.” Her response figuratively is, “OK, then don’t
disturb me.”
The biggest
problems with projection is that it hold you back because of
fear and you tend to notice or look for evidence to support the
projection. You will always find evidence - guaranteed.
Worse though, this evidence will reinforce the fear which makes
it even harder the next time.
In reality you
don’t know what is going to happen. If you did you’d be
preparing other steps and not worrying about what could happen.
Every situation is different, and just because something
happened in the past does not mean it will happen in the future.
It’s good to know about the past and develop actions that are
different. Even though the probability says it will happen
again, it is not 100% certain. You may be hitting the low
probability situation or you’ve set it up differently so the
past probabilities are different.
Dealing
with Projection
The simple way
to overcome projection is to realize you are projecting.
You do this by testing your feelings. Knowing you have to
get to a key executive, ask yourself, “How do I feel about
getting to Joan?” Then listen to your child. “I’m a little
uncomfortable.” This means fear in a milder form.
“So why am I uncomfortable? The admin is a bear to deal
with. She never answers her phone.” Catch yourself when
these statements come out and tell yourself you’re projecting.
You don’t know what will happen. Fear is powerful in a negative
way. No one ever attained greatness or lived happily by
being afraid. Best case they survived, and that is not
living.
Another way of
dealing with projection is to positively project. Lots of
books, tapes, seminars, lectures, etc. talk about this.
“What’s the best that could happen?” or “This phone call is
going to make a big positive impact on my relationship with this
executive.” Once again, your projection will cause you to
look for positive evidence and you will create your own destiny.
Then it will reinforce future actions - in a positive way.
Your demeanor will reflect your positive attitude and you will
create a great destiny for yourself.
Dealing
with Projected Problems
Lots of times
we go into an account and we’ve heard something that’s a
problem, issue, concern or whatever. Projection can take
this to an extreme and destroy you. What you’ve heard may
be real and it may be real to an individual. Does it speak
for all the people involved? Maybe, maybe not. Is it
a big problem? Maybe, maybe not. Your responsibility
is to track this down to see what this problem is all about.
Many people are afraid to do this because it might pass on bad
information to someone that didn’t have a problem. Why are
they afraid? Projection of what will happen. Here is
a place that you cannot project. You have to get to the
realities. If it is a serious problem, it will get to
everyone sooner or later if not handled. Therefore, you
want to get issues, etc. surfaced and handled. Otherwise
they can surface later and kill you. Projection is keeping
you from facing these issues. Recognize your projecting
and determine a plan. The plan should be to verify the
problem is real and with whom. The plan should then be
correct or neutralize the issue.
As an example
of projection, I’ll use my daughter’s search for a job.
She recently graduated from college and needed a job. She
prospected using the normal channels and got an appointment for
an interview. During the interview two key executives
asked her if she had a certain type of experience. Her
answer was no and both were very disappointed. She felt
this was critical to getting the job and so she felt really sad
when she left. Later that day, she got a call saying she
was hired. See had projected the worse. Fortunately
it didn’t hurt her. However, if she didn’t get the job she
could have beat herself up about not having a certain
experience. This could have caused her to eliminate these
types of prospects from her search, or if she encountered the
question again she’d feel uncomfortable - which would be picked
up by perceptive interviewer. In other words she would
have lost confidence and as we have discussed, confidence is
critical to success.
What should
she have done when asked the experience question? She
should have asked how important it was with the individual.
Was it just information needed or was it a critical factor?
If critical, she could have attempted a response. She
assumed it was critical - twice. Obviously it wasn’t.
Projection
leads to fear. Fear leads to shattered confidence.
Shattered confidence leads to lack of credibility. Lack of
credibility lead to getting nowhere. Recognize you’re
doing it and start dealing with it. Ask yourself what is
the worst that can happen? What will happen if it does?
Can you live with it? You’ll find you can. It will
never kill you so don’t project and act like it will.
Another action
to deal with projection is to gather more information. The
more information you have the less projection you will do.
You will come to a realization. From realization you can
take action with confidence. Without information, you
assume which leads to projection. Since you’re not sure
what to do so you become paralyzed or flee. Information is
powerful. Projection is debilitating.
And now I invite you to learn more.
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