TIPS SELLING TIP
Don’t Settle for “No” Win or lose, every sales transaction should be a learning experience. Call to mind your last rejection. What did you learn from it? True, in selling you win some and lose some. Top earners in the field appreciate this. Still, if they walk away from a turndown with no knowledge gained, they feel they’ve wasted their time. And time, they figure, is too important to waste. In one situation where a top earner (we’ll call him “Bob”) bombed, the following conversation with “Jane,” the assistant buyer, took place. Why the as- sistant? Because, although the buyer who had brusquely turned him down said she was too busy to answer his questions, Jane agreed to oblige. Bob: You were in on this from the outset. I thought
SELLING TIP Paradoxical Therapy
When you experience a sales rejec- tion, consider the old remedy the experts have used for decades. Think to yourself, “Nobody can re- ject me. They may reject my propo- sition, but they can’t reject ME.” That’s the tried-and-true (but not highly effective) intellectual approach. The fallacy? Rejection doesn’t get you in the intellect but in the guts. My prescription is paradoxical
therapy: Find out what you fear most and go get yourself a truckload of it. What will happen won’t be nearly as bad as what you fear will happen. I first learned of this method while
selling funeral insurance in Seattle in the early 1960s. Our general agent was a fine man, but he couldn’t spell “paradoxical therapy,” much less pronounce it. He just called it “get- ting the insides kicked out of you.” He had each new agent call 100 people picked out of the phone book at random. We told them our real names and then used a canned
pitch to offer them either china, encyclopedias, or vacuum cleaners. Why those three items? Our manager knew that few people would want to buy them. And since we didn’t even sell them, we knew we were certain to lose. We really annoyed many of the people we called and they took it out on us. Some of the salespeople never made it through the first 10 calls. Maybe sales was the wrong field for them.
Those of us who made it through
100 calls learned a valuable lesson: The angrier people get, the funnier they are – as long as they can’t get their hands on you and you don’t accept their evaluation of you. Now I say again: If you fear rejec-
tion, and that fear is holding you back, go get yourself a healthy load of it. Swim in it. Wash in it. Wallow in it. Then move on to the next call. That’s the only cure that works.
– HANK TRISLER
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I had the sale sewed up. What happened? Did Miss Jones feel something was wrong with the product? Jane (hesitantly): No, it wasn’t that. Bob: Then what was it? I’d appreciate any help I can get. Jane: Well, I believe Miss Jones was annoyed by the add-ons you tried to sell. Bob (frowning): I thought they would be helpful. Jane: Maybe so. Miss Jones didn’t think so. Bob: That’s interesting. Was there anything else? Jane: Not that I know of. Miss Jones felt you were pushy. That’s why she turned down your bid. Bob: Thank you. I appreciate your confiding in me. Moral of the story: Even though this was a NO SALE gig, it was not a waste of time. Bob got something out of the experience that may avoid future NO SALE bomb-outs. He didn’t simply settle for “No.” That’s why the guy is a pro. – RAY DREYFACK
VIDEO: DIVERSITY TRAINING THAT TRANSFORMS PERFORMANCE
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