Simply because they cannot deal with the rejection that is part and parcel of the business.
In the Classic book ‘Think and Grow Rich’, the author Napoleon Hill who had interviewed some of the richest and most successful people like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, described six major fears that manage our life…
Fear of Poverty
Fear of Criticism
Fear of Ill-Health
Fear of Old Age
Fear of Death
Fear of Loss of Love of Someone
But yours truly wants to add two more fears to this list…
First is the Fear of Rejection. And the other one is the Fear of Failure.
You see, these fears are not really bad.
They help us to take precautions. They help us to grow and prepare for the worst.
Fear of Ill-Health helps people to eat and live healthily.
Fear of Criticism helps people to behave well in society.
Fear of Failure helps people to work hard and smart.
Even industries exploit these fears to sell their products.
Fear of Criticism induces people to discard old clothes, old automobiles and replace them with new ones from time to time.
Fear of Rejection helps the cosmetic industry to sell expensive products to those who want to look attractive and win compliments from others.
But these fears also stop us in taking challenges because of which we go on to live a mediocre life.
For example, in the case of the Sales profession, Salespeople quit a lucrative sales career because of these reasons:
Fear to make cold calls.
Fear to approach strangers.
Fear to give presentations in front of the audience.
Fear to meet big shots.
Fear to ask details from clients.
Fear to answer objections.
Fear to negotiate.
Fear to ask closing questions.
Fear to ask for promotion, commission, and bonus.
And many, many more… I don’t want to spend hours on this.
You see, these fears are natural.
We cannot ignore these fears. But these fears could affect our health if they occupy our mind all the time.
The question is how to combat them?
And the answer is we just need some knowledge. Fears will automatically vanish from our mind.
Let me explain with one example. One of my personal experiences at the beginning of my sales career.
It was a sales meeting where I had to meet the Director of an engineering college. He was a retired military man.
When the Director was talking about his daily hectic schedule, I used one wrong word which made him furious.
I said, “I can understand that you’re a busy CHAP”. It was due to my college time habits when I frequently used the word “chap” in my conversations with friends.
It was just a slip of tongue. But he felt offended.
He started behaving like someone had announced a war against him. He took it personally and threatened me to leave his office immediately otherwise he would complain to my boss.
I got scared. I was shivering while coming back to my office. I made up my mind that Sales is not for me.
For the next 2-3 days, I felt devastated. The whole incident was coming in front of my eyes again and again.
But fortunately, that time I was having a good habit to read self-improvement and business books.
I started exploring my library. By chance, the book I picked to read was having an excellent exercise to deal with such kind of situations.
When I started performing that exercise for the next few days the whole sad episode was turned into a funny scene. And in this way, I was able to save my sales career with a single exercise.
One of the main reasons why top salespeople are so good at selling is that they know the power of these fears and they learn how to deal with fears for their own profit.
If they can do why not you?
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Vibhor
