Fear of public speaking is less daunting than fear of failing
By far the biggest fear of salespeople is fear of failure. It has a cousin, namely fear of rejection. Rejection is the pathway to failure - if you fear it. While failure itself is real, the fear of it is a condition of the mind.
Earl Nightingale's legendary tape "The Strangest Secret" says, "You become what you think about." If that's true, why doesn't everyone think "success?" The answer is a combination of what we expose ourselves to, and how we condition ourselves.
We live in a world of negative conditioning. The three big motivators are fear, greed and vanity. They drive the sales process, and they drive the salesperson.
Society preys on the fear factor. It's in 50% of the advertisements we see (the rest are greed or vanity). Ads about life insurance for death and disability, anti-freeze for stalled cars, tires that grip the road in the rain, brakes that stop to avoid hitting a child on a bike, and security systems so your home won't be robbed. If you see that crap enough, you become "fear-conditioned."
Once society gives you fear, it's natural that you take it with you into the workplace. It transmutes into a fear of failure. This fear intensifies in workplaces with hostile environments. Bosses and managers who threaten, intimidate and ridicule.
In the midst of this we struggle for success. And while we think we fear failure, or at least don't want it around us, we all face it in one form or another every day. Everyone fails. But failure is relative. Its measurement is subjective. Mostly it occurs in your mind. If you exchange "I failed" for "I learned what never to do again," it's a completely different mindset. The status of failure is up to you.
Over the years of my failures, I have developed a great way of looking at it (lots of practice). I learn from it, or I ignore it.
Thomas Edison: He failed 6,000 times before the light bulb. Real estate developer Donald Trump had monumental failures on his way to the top. The Solidarity movement, afterall, was shut down in the early 1980s, only to take over power 10 years later. And what about the battle of Monte Cassino? It took Polish troops several tries there before they finally defeated Germans and paved a way to Rome.
There are degrees of failure in sales. Here are some external ones:
l Failure to prepare
l Failure to make contacts
l Failure to make a sale
l Failure to meet a quota
l Failure to keep a job
External (outside) fears, lead to internal (inside) fears - fear based on what happens when you fail or are close to failing. Your reaction to internal fear determines your fate. It's not what happens to you, it's what you do with what happens to you. Here are the five typical reactions to rejection or failure:
l Curse it.
l Deny it (a nice way of saying lie
about it).
l Avoid it.
l Make an excuse about it.
l Blame others (the easiest thing to do).
l Quit.
Failure actually only occurs when you decide to quit. You choose your results. Here are a few simple things you can do to avoid getting to the "quit" stage:
l Look at failure as an event, not a person.
l Look for the why, and find the solution (If you look at "no" hard enough, it will lead you to "yes").
l List possible opportunities.
l Ask yourself what have I learned, and try again.
l Don't mope around with other failures. Go find a successful person, and hang around him.
Here are a few complicated things you can do to avoid getting to the "I quit" stage:
l Create a new environment.
l Cultivate new associations.
l Access new information.
l Get a new mind set, or fill your mind with the positive.
l Realize that it's always too soon to quit.
Afraid to speak, or afraid to fail? Which is the greater fear? When you consider the complications and ramifications of failure, making a speech to 1,000 people, by comparison, is a walk in the park.
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of "The Sales Bible," and "Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless." President of Charlotte-based Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts training programs on selling and customer service. Inquiries should be made to the Warsaw Business Journal, (48-22) 646-0575 or directly to Gitomer at salesman@gitomer.com
Earl Nightingale's legendary tape "The Strangest Secret" says, "You become what you think about." If that's true, why doesn't everyone think "success?" The answer is a combination of what we expose ourselves to, and how we condition ourselves.
We live in a world of negative conditioning. The three big motivators are fear, greed and vanity. They drive the sales process, and they drive the salesperson.
Society preys on the fear factor. It's in 50% of the advertisements we see (the rest are greed or vanity). Ads about life insurance for death and disability, anti-freeze for stalled cars, tires that grip the road in the rain, brakes that stop to avoid hitting a child on a bike, and security systems so your home won't be robbed. If you see that crap enough, you become "fear-conditioned."
Once society gives you fear, it's natural that you take it with you into the workplace. It transmutes into a fear of failure. This fear intensifies in workplaces with hostile environments. Bosses and managers who threaten, intimidate and ridicule.
In the midst of this we struggle for success. And while we think we fear failure, or at least don't want it around us, we all face it in one form or another every day. Everyone fails. But failure is relative. Its measurement is subjective. Mostly it occurs in your mind. If you exchange "I failed" for "I learned what never to do again," it's a completely different mindset. The status of failure is up to you.
Over the years of my failures, I have developed a great way of looking at it (lots of practice). I learn from it, or I ignore it.
Thomas Edison: He failed 6,000 times before the light bulb. Real estate developer Donald Trump had monumental failures on his way to the top. The Solidarity movement, afterall, was shut down in the early 1980s, only to take over power 10 years later. And what about the battle of Monte Cassino? It took Polish troops several tries there before they finally defeated Germans and paved a way to Rome.
There are degrees of failure in sales. Here are some external ones:
l Failure to prepare
l Failure to make contacts
l Failure to make a sale
l Failure to meet a quota
l Failure to keep a job
External (outside) fears, lead to internal (inside) fears - fear based on what happens when you fail or are close to failing. Your reaction to internal fear determines your fate. It's not what happens to you, it's what you do with what happens to you. Here are the five typical reactions to rejection or failure:
l Curse it.
l Deny it (a nice way of saying lie
about it).
l Avoid it.
l Make an excuse about it.
l Blame others (the easiest thing to do).
l Quit.
Failure actually only occurs when you decide to quit. You choose your results. Here are a few simple things you can do to avoid getting to the "quit" stage:
l Look at failure as an event, not a person.
l Look for the why, and find the solution (If you look at "no" hard enough, it will lead you to "yes").
l List possible opportunities.
l Ask yourself what have I learned, and try again.
l Don't mope around with other failures. Go find a successful person, and hang around him.
Here are a few complicated things you can do to avoid getting to the "I quit" stage:
l Create a new environment.
l Cultivate new associations.
l Access new information.
l Get a new mind set, or fill your mind with the positive.
l Realize that it's always too soon to quit.
Afraid to speak, or afraid to fail? Which is the greater fear? When you consider the complications and ramifications of failure, making a speech to 1,000 people, by comparison, is a walk in the park.
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of "The Sales Bible," and "Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless." President of Charlotte-based Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts training programs on selling and customer service. Inquiries should be made to the Warsaw Business Journal, (48-22) 646-0575 or directly to Gitomer at salesman@gitomer.com
