To be successful in sales we need to put in the work. We have to have the skill and discipline to consistently and effectively execute our sales process. We must be persistent, possess a strong drive to win, be goal and achievement oriented, be resilient to setbacks and challenges, the list goes on.
These are essential behaviors and characteristics. Then there are the real, tangible pressures: the need to make quota (keep our jobs!), pay the bills, save for retirement, support family members, pay for educations, and a host of other needs. On top of basic needs there are aspirations like buying the car we want, taking a nice vacation, investing in an expensive hobby (golf anyone?), etc.
The combination of our (positive) characteristics and behaviors along with our needs and desires can create a paradox that manifests itself in our professional attitude and behaviors. We can become desperate; to get the appointment, to convince the buyer to take the next steps in the process and to close the deal. And acting from a mindset of desperation has negative consequences. It changes our behavior, our reactions to resistance to our proposals, the words we use, even our tone and body language.
Buyers sense this and the consequences are not good. In his outstanding book, Sales EQ, Jeb Blount writes “Desperation is a disruptive emotion that causes you to feel insecure, make poor decisions, and become needy and weak…Stakeholders can sense desperation and are repelled by it..Stakeholders gravitate toward confidence.” And when buyers sense desperation undesirable things happen. Desperation breeds self-focus when buyers want us to focus on them, their issues. They may turn off completely; our fear of losing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or they know they have the “upper hand” and can make us jump through hoops and we end up doing an unprofitable deal or they just use us as “column fodder” for their preferred option. And desperation can create a cycle of negativity. We turn buyers off and lose deals, so we become more desperate, then we lose confidence, our motivation drops and we end up in a downward spiral.
So, given all the pressures we face, how can we overcome our natural propensity for desperation? Detach from the outcomes (this is the paradox part)! What if we had enough quality opportunities in our pipelines that losing one deal isn’t the end of the world? What if we prospected consistently enough that we accept the inevitable rejection and simply persist, knowing we’ll get some hits? We could remain emotionally detached from the outcome of each deal or each call. We could focus on the things we can control; process and execution. We might keep our focus on helping the customer, not just closing the sale (which paradoxically is more effective). I’m not suggesting we mute our desire to win or the other attributes and attitudes vital to our success. But if we can take a step back, detach emotionally from the outcomes of each engagement, and be confident that if we put in the work and stay “other focused” we won’t become desperate. Desperation doesn’t sell, confidence does!
