I have a confession to make, I did not sell a single duck. Nope, not a single one. You might be wondering how I could be such a bad salesman, and the answer is I didn’t try. I was afraid of what would happen if I did. So, I’d like to go over that day and see why we fear sales, and how to strengthen ourselves to rejection.
The most important lesson about fear is it doesn’t always feel like fear. Sometimes we justify our position so well that we legitimately think we made the right choice. For example, I thought I was making the right choice because I didn’t have time to go to a wing night. I thought the time I would’ve spent selling ducks would be better used to do homework. For a while I thought I was right. After thinking about it for a while though, I realized it was just my nerves, and that my mind would’ve made any justification to explain why I wasn’t going to sell ducks.
The second important lesson is that we need to get rejected in order to build our tolerance. Much like how fighting off a disease helps you to fight it better next time, we need to get rejected to build our tolerance to rejection.
The third lesson is that we can only build our tolerance to rejection if we use the right mindset and positive self-talk. If you tell yourself that you suck every time someone rejects you, you don’t build tolerance. Instead analyze the encounter to see what you could have done better and then explain why you failed with temporary or external forces.
With all this being said, the easiest way to sell seems to be doing the exact inverse of what we think. Instead of going after the easiest clients first, go after the clients that will be the hardest to sell to. Much like eating your vegetables before your desert, getting rejected by these harder clients makes it all the sweeter when you get a yes from an easy client.
So, if you have a hard time talking to people, my best advice is to just talk to someone, anyone, and go for no, that way yes will always feel extraordinary, rather than ordinary.
BoweryJE22
It is really cool to see what you learned from the duck selling exercise last week! Even though you did not sell a single duck, you probably learned more than most of us did that day. You made great points about fear, rejection, and the importance of just talking to people.
Thank you for sharing your experience and what you learned about fear and sales. It can be very intimidating to put yourself in a position to get rejected, but like you said, going for a “no” is a great teacher and is what makes getting a “yes” so sweet. It’s hard to put yourself out there and very easy to make justifications as you mentioned, but I’m glad you were able to turn this experience into some great sales lessons to take into the future!
What a great lesson you learned from selling ducks! Overall, I think your aspect of failing in this sales process can be seen as a far greater success story than that of failure. An internal justification system, is something that I think most people can relate to on a real note not only in sales but in many aspects of life.