I thought I knew a lot about sales until my current day job. I’d sold real estate AND mortgages before. But now I’m selling vacation ownership and, let me tell you, luxury sales is MUCH different from necessity sales. Anyone in the home buying process needs a place to live, and they need a mortgage to buy it. Vacation ownership is a totally different animal. You are dealing with people who may want your service, but you really have to help persuade them to make a decision. I can’t tell you the number of I’ll-think-about-it’s I’ve gotten (and still get) over the years. Then add in sales quotas and bills to pay and you have a recipe for major stress and anxiety.
And, that anxiety is the WORST thing you can have when you are trying to make sales. You have to be supremely confident in yourself and your product before anyone else will believe in you. It took me my first two years of vacation selling before I realized that I was the biggest obstacle to my success. Or, rather, that little voice in my head was…
If you just thought “What little voice?,” that’s the one I’m talking about. The one that says, “What if they don’t like me?” “What if I screw up?” “Maybe I should just wait to call them.” That little voice can make you or break you. Everybody’s got one. And until you control your that voice in your head, it will control you!
For me, this was the most important breakthrough I had in my sales career. I realized that the only person who thought I couldn’t be successful… was me! Once I realize that I needed to build myself up, instead of filling myself with doubt, I started growing my sales and my confidence together. By just identifying and changing my thought patterns, I was able to reduce my anxiety going into a sales call and produce much more consistent results.
It’s all in your head
First, realize that you have complete control of your thoughts and actions. As soon as you start having negative thoughts, you can disassociate yourself and change your thinking. For example, if I start thinking, “I can’t do this,” or “I’m gonna screw this sale up,” or “They’re not gonna buy,” I immediately stop. They I say to myself,
“Rob, that’s just your little voice talking. You know better than he does. You have had great success in the past, and you can do this too! You are just gonna follow your process, do your best, and whatever happens, happens.”
This works when I am stressed before a presentation, or before I play a DJ set. Both feelings are actually very similar. I just have to remind myself that I know what I’m doing, I’ve done it before, and it’s gonna be great!
Follow your process
My sales process takes a lot of the stress away for me as well. I’m following the same basics steps with each client I speak to, and I have said some of it so much that I know exactly what I’m going to say at certain points. I feel like this is something I can fall back on when all else fails. I start with an initial contact, I set an appointment to talk details, I get as much information about what the client needs, then I make arrangements to deliver and sign a contract. At every step of the way, I am just there to learn about their needs and help them any way I can.
Because I’ve had repeatable success with this method before, I know what to expect and how it will go. I know about 30-50% of the people I contact will schedule a consultation, and about 50% of those people will sign a contract. This helps me not freak out when a sale doesn’t happen. I’m a numbers person, so I know it’s just a numbers game. You have to build a repeatable process that feels good to you, and follow it to get the consistent results you seek.
But, what if you are brand new, and don’t know what results your process will bring? Think of yourself as a salesperson in training. Your only goal is to get as much practice as possible and track your results. If you don’t get the success you want, look back at the results of each step and find the weak links. Correct, track and repeat until you get success.
Reps will make it less scary
And, speaking of as much practice as possible, repetition will reduce your fears. Practice as much as you can with live people, over and over, until it’s second nature. This reminds me of one of my hobbies, playing poker. I still remember the first time I played for money in a real casino. I was playing with $40, the only money I had. I got a big hand. I was shaking so bad that I could barely put my chips into the pot. I won (yay!), but the guy across the table told me my exact hand after I folded.
Was I that obvious? Yes. I had never been in that situation before, so my adrenaline and emotions spiked so high that other people at the table could physically see it. It was all over my face.
Now, I’ve played enough hands to barely blink when I have a good one. It was just a matter of desensitizing myself to that stressful feeling.
The same thing is true in sales. When you first start out, everything will feel like life and death. But, as you present over and over and over and over, that feeling will fade into “been there, done that, nothing to get worked up about.” So, get as many reps as you can, in real-life selling situations, as quickly and as often as possible. If you are nervous, you will make your client’s nervous, and nobody buys when they are nervous.
What’s the worst that could happen?
If I can’t get that little voice in my head to shut up, I have a game I play with him instead. I’ll ask myself, “What’s the worse that could happen?” If everything were to go horribly wrong, what would the result be?
Now, I’m not talking about indulging a depressive spiral, like “Oh, if they don’t hire me, I won’t have rent money and I’ll end up homeless and die in a ditch!” I’m talking about being realistic. In sales, that means the worst thing that could happen is they will say no. And, doesn’t that happen at least half the time anyway?!? So what! Just find somebody else looking to hire a DJ, and try again!
This is an even better tool for event anxiety, because it will help you prepare and practice for the worst case scenario. Like, “What happens if the power goes out, or the sounds just stops?” Those are things you should know how to deal with. The little things like, “What if I screw up a mix?”, teach yourself not to sweat those. You will make mistakes, we all do. You are good enough to recover and be better the next time.
Do your best, forget the rest
This is my motto every day. If you give your all at every step of the sales process, you can sleep soundly at night knowing you did everything you could. Short-term results have very little to do with your short-term actions. Maybe the client is hiring another DJ because it’s his cousin, or she didn’t like the color of your webpage. A lot of times, you’ll never know. So, don’t worry about it.
The only thing you should think about is your long-term results. Long-term results come from getting up every work day, working your process to the best of your ability, and getting a little bit better each time. I learned a great saying from my mama: Some will, some won’t. So what? Move on!
Conclusion
You can’t control your clients, just like you can’t control the weather. The only person in this life you can control is you. If you follow these tips, you will reduce your sales anxiety and increase your confidence. Increasing your confidence will increase your sales, which will further increase your confidence. Before you know it, you are a success and confidence-building snowball rolling downhill, smashing all the doubt and anxiety in your path. You can do this! I know you can, now you just have to believe it too.
