As a salesperson, it is nearly impossible to do your job with a pessimistic explanatory style. If you have this type of attitude, it not only makes the process of making a sale harder, but also affects your ability to deal with rejection. Nobody wants to interact with, or buy from, a pessimistic salesperson.
A person with a pessimistic style tends to be permanent, general, and internal. These traits are the opposite of what you want to have as a salesperson. If a salesperson is permanent, then they can’t move past rejection. Instead, they hold onto rejection and each rejection that they receive builds off of the previous one. You can’t approach the your next prospect with the baggage of the previous rejection hanging off of you. A salesperson also cannot afford to be general. While you do not want to spill all of your candy in the lobby, you still want to be able to differentiate yourself from the competition. If you are general, the prospect is going to lose interest in what you have to say. Finally, a salesperson cannot be internal. You have to be able to interact with your prospect and find commonalities to build off of. This does not mean that you have to have an extrinsic personality, it just means that you have to be able to step out of your comfort zone to find what your prospect’s pain really is.
This is why it is good to have an optimistic style as a salesperson. Instead of seeing rejection as permanent, an optimist is able to see rejection as temporary. An optimist is also able to be specific instead of general. A salesperson who is able to be specific can not only draw a prospect’s interest, but can also dig deeper into what the prospect’s true pain really is. Finally, an optimist has the ability to be external instead of internal. Being external helps you to relate to the individual you are selling to. The relations that you create help to take the prospect out of a defensive mindset and puts the prospect at ease.
A salesperson can only succeed as an optimist because optimism gives you the ability to be temporary, specific, and external.
BoweryJE22