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| Do you sometimes feel you can't even get in the front door? |
As I sit here at the quietest time of the business year my mind is
turning to sales.
We don’t know yet what the troubles in Europe mean for the global economy
but we do know that not all companies will survive the tide going out for the
next little while.
Having fought my way through the last recession by taking on five times
the normal customer base in order to maintain turnover (and almost having a
nervous breakdown to go with it), I am furiously determined to come out of this
one with a bigger and more profitable company.
So again back to sales – the lifeblood of any business. Of the many aspects of sales my question
today is how to keep your motivation up.
I don’t know about you, but the rejection can really get to me
sometimes.
For every positive meeting you may have ten bad ones.
For every friendly phone call you get told to go away by four or five
people.
Most of the time you can brush it off, but every negative experience
takes a little piece of you and it’s hard to get it back. After over 7 years of
selling professional services, recruitment services and engineering services,
some days I feel worn down.
If you really want to feel some more rejection in your life just try
selling recruitment services into middle management – it is a magnificently masochistic
profession.
On top of the constant rejection there are also times where personal
factors such as illness in the family, divorce, death of a loved one, etc. can
sap your energy leaving you with little vitality for making sales calls.
Yes, I know taking a holiday could help, but guess what folks, when you
are establishing the business that’s really not going to happen for the first
year of two.
First I thought I’d start with a bit of a sidetrack into acting. Actors
are selling themselves and their own ability, so the many rejections they face
are truly hurtful. Their pride is trashed by rejection on an almost daily basis
and they can’t separate their own ego from the product as they are the product.
Here are some tips from the world of acting.
Next, the following are links into articles and blogs from salespeople
on how they deal with rejection and stay motivated.
Your observations are also welcome – please feel free to comment or
email me.
As a good friend says – “keep on swinging, you might just connect”.
And remember to smile.
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