Like Bill, Hank is an average sales- person. Again, like Bill, Hank becomes insecure whenever he is questioned by a buyer. But Hank differs from Bill in the way he shows his insecurity. You see, Hank “moves against.” Finally, there’s Tom – ambitious, young, and proud. No one in the of- fice can understand why Tom’s sales record isn’t better. Boiling with enthu- siasm at weekly sales meetings, Tom seems to cool down in front of buyers. His problem, unfortunately, is the insecurity he feels whenever the out- come of a sale is in doubt. When Tom feels insecure, he “moves toward.” It was psychiatrist Karen Horney, some half century ago, who first described the “neurotic” trends of “moving away from, moving against, and moving toward people.” It was she who said that all three trends were responses to insecurity. All three responses, she said, could get in the way of successful, satisfying living. So, too, can they get in the way of successful selling.
THREE INSECURE SALES TYPES Bill, Hank, and Tom could be success- ful, even outstanding, salesmen. Yet each is hampered by insecurity. Oddly enough, it isn’t their faults that do them in, but the shifts they make in themselves to cover up their faults. Reading Bill’s body language, we see that Bill moves away. He leans back in his chair, diverts his eyes from the buyer’s, and becomes uncharacteristi- cally bland. Hank, on the other hand, “moves against.” He leans forward, frequently slaps the table top, stares his buyer down, and clenches his fists. His usually aloof posture becomes intimi- dating and aggressive. And Tom, who “moves toward,” leans forward, nods incessantly, grins with vacant eyes, and seems like a frightened puppy dog hoping to please his master. What it is important to remember is that none of them is reacting to the buyer. Each is reacting to his own internal insecurity. Sure, the buyers may be offering objections or asking questions, but neither the objections
nor the questions kill the sale. It’s the way Bill, Hank, and Tom react to objections – and the way each feels insecure and reacts to that internal feeling – that kills the sale. It’s as if they are so afraid of doing something wrong, of being imperfect, that they allow those fears to cloud their judgment and dilute their ability to make the sale. Unfortunately, Bill, Hank, and Tom are not unique. In the years we’ve been training salespeople, we have met thousands of Bills, Hanks, and Toms. These thousands of salespeople allow their own insecurities to prevent them from being successful. They hear an objection or receive a question from a buyer and get sidetracked off the road to success and become hope- lessly entangled in a net of cover-ups and diversions.
BLINDED BY INADEQUACIES They forget to read their buyers and, instead, become obsessed with reading themselves. By turning their vision inward, they find every fault and inadequacy they possess. To make it worse, when they discover their own faults, they seem to do their very best to expose these faults to the buyer. They move recklessly “toward,” “away from,” or “against” their customers. Funny thing about security: it’s
IMPROVE YOUR SELF TALK
not how much you have that mat- ters, but rather how much you can do without! The weakest among us aren’t those who are loaded with insecurity. Instead, the weakest are those who cannot tolerate even the slightest bit of self-doubt. Yet, who is really ever without doubt? Didn’t Picasso wonder, at first, if his revolutionary style of painting would be successful? Didn’t Alex- ander Graham Bell think, even for a moment, that the telephone would never work – would never be what he hoped it would be? All great men and women have doubts, as do all great salespeople. There always is something that cannot be controlled, that may go wrong, that can spoil even the best plans for suc- cess. Proceeding in the face of doubt is what separates the successful from the beaten, the winners from the losers.
OUR GUIDING FICTIONS It has to do with expectations, with what psychologist Alfred Adler called “guiding fictions.” We all have them. They are the notions we develop about how we are supposed to be- have and how the world works. Since we form them as children, more often than not our guiding fictions are inac- curate. Yet we tenaciously hold onto them, even as adults, when experi-
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