Embracing Failure in Sales

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Success is something we all strive for, be it in our professional lives or hobbies we are always seeking to be the best and ultimately succeed.

For sales people failure is something we all fear, it’s something that has been given a negative image and instinctively we try and avoid the word.

failure

The trouble with the term failure in sales is that it get’s associated with everything:

  • Not selling on the first cold call.
  • Not winning the deal in the first meeting.
  • Not hitting your yearly target.

To be successful in any sales role it’s always important to accept failure, to be honest you should strive to achieve failure ahead of success because it’ll promote a whole new train of thought in the long run.

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Embracing Failure

  • Failure is a good teacher, far more is retained when you’ve tried and failed.
  • Success can and does promote a big ego, especially when it comes to sales professionals. Failing a few times will help to humble you not just now but it’ll remind you in the future too.
  • You become creative and quizitive when you fail, seeking new avenues to reach that ever elusive “success” factor.
  • Never encountering failure will give you the false sense of security that your ideas and thoughts are always right, failure reminds you to listen to others and take on board their thoughts.
  • Courage is signalled by failure, you’ve gone out of your comfort zone and tried something new which few can admit they’ve done.
  • When you fail you begin to take things far less seriously, you’ll begin to see that the business world is far bigger then it really is.
  • Failure gives you wisdom which gives you the ability to relate to others diminishing any previous salary or job title gaps that commonly separates humans.

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The next time your tasked with a cold calling session think to yourself about exactly why it is that you’re not looking forward to it. 9 times out of 10 people that dislike cold calling do so because they fear the word “No” which for a sales person directly corresponds with “Failure”.

What can make the feeling even worse is if the individual is passionate, they are far more likely to take it to heart regardless of what the sales manager says after a poor day. Avoiding this sort of setback of lack of motivation and distaste for any sales activity should be high on the agenda list for even the sales professionals, not just the managers.


From a sales managers perspective it’s important to embrace failure, promote it too. Freedom to fail should mean that there will be no repercussions for trying something and failing (obviously there will be limits that will be considered over the top).


Ensure that you’re reminding the team failure isn’t going to result in job losses or punishment, we’re not in school anymore.


From a sales professionals perspective failing shouldn’t be feared, not only does it hinder your performance it’ll also hurt your future potential to go up the ladder or even move to another company. Failure is something that comes with the territory when you’ve a sales professional, the sooner you embrace it the sooner you can become successful.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

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