by Jacques Werth
High Probability Selling is scary. It’s a radical departure from what most salespeople are doing. It’s hard to believe that it will actually work.
The Fear of Loss
You may be afraid that you will lose sales if you don’t push for every single one. If you are not closing enough sales now, you may believe that allowing your prospects to say “no” will make things much worse. It may be difficult to believe that accepting “no” allows you to move on much more quickly to your next “yes”.
The Fear of Rejection
You may be afraid that the pain of rejection will be much worse when you listen to your prospects say “no” to you again and again. With High Probability Selling, you will hear “no” a lot more often than you do now. If you can learn to accept that, then you will also hear “yes” a lot more often than you do now.
The Fear of Inadequacy
You may be afraid of starting over and becoming a beginner again. You may feel reasonably competent with the way you have been selling. It is normal to be afraid that you may not be able to master something you don’t thoroughly understand and have never tried before. If you are able to move ahead in spite of that fear, you could be on your way to becoming a highly competent sales producer.
Fear of Fear
Before my first fight, my boxing coach taught me something about fear. “You can either walk away now and be terrified for the rest of your life, or you can get into the ring and deal with it.”
Author
From my experience, HPS is a recipe for joy, one of life’s greatest motivators. Once I overcame the fear of fear here is what I am experiencing.
The joy of success.
The joy of being accepted and appreciated.
The joy of accomplishment.
The joy of overcoming fear.
Ultimately, the joy of trust and respect with everyone I choose to work with.
Jacques you did a good job articulating this. I find myself talking to people often these days about High Probability Selling and I think the fear I’m finding the most people getting caught up on is The Fear of Loss. It seems like its a hard concept to get that taking a no quickly and respectively will mean more yeses.
Charles,
I think you are right about the Fear of Loss.
Most salespeople believe that every contact with a live person transforms that person into a “prospect,” and if they say the right things, that prospect will buy. So, they spend most of their time and resources on low probability prospects. They seldom get it that you cannot lose what you don’t have.
In reality, even after a prospect has said “Yes,” to your prospecting offer, there is still nothing to lose. It’s just another step in the sales process.
At each step, your probability of completing a sale should increase. If it does not increase, the winning strategy is to temporarily disqualify the prospect. It is a simple, but powerful, strategy to spend most of your selling time with high probability prospects.
Jacques