The most destructive emotion a sales person can have is fear.
Fear will kill a deal in two seconds. Fear will drop the price of your product or solution 30% in the blink of an eye. Fear is the nemesis of good sales organizations. When sales people sell afraid, they are out of control. To avoid selling with fear:
(a) Build enough value in what your selling so the customer is the one that has more to lose
(b) Have a healthy pipeline so not everything relies on one deal
(c) Don’t need the commission check (have money in the bank)
(d) Know you are a good sales person
Selling scared is a train wreck. Your customers and prospects can smell it. You lack confidence, you don’t hold your own and your customers go for blood. Value, solutions, and anything productive gets lost in the feeding frenzy of reducing price out of fear you’re gonna lose the deal. Don’t be a train wreck. Know the value you bring to the table and stand tall, because if you don’t, selling scared will crush you.
Don’t sell scared!
Keenan, thanks for this.
I shared this with my team today, fully realizing that this is easy to say on December 1, when we have the full month ahead of us to make quota.
But, how hard was it to avoid ‘selling scared’ yesterday?
My follow-up question to them was, “What can you do TODAY that helps you avoid selling scared at the end of THIS month?”
Great question to ask your team. I would also add, management needs to ask that question too. Far too often it’s management that is creating an addition layer of fear. In their attempt to make the number they put undo pressure on the sales people to close deal that aren’t ready to close. Adding undo pressure on the sales team, increases the chance they sell scared.
Thanks for sharing my man!
Keenan after this post I’ve renamed you….Jim ‘THE TRUTH’ Keenan.
I can take that, great name. LOL