6 Steps To Overcome Your Fear of Sales

Want to improve your sales skills, but have a fear of selling? You’re not alone. Many people view sales as getting people to buy a product or service including ones they did not know they needed. However, sales is about guiding people to the right solutions that could benefit them. Helping your clients or customers identify their needs can help you determine how your product or service can help them.

So, keep reading if you’re ready to learn how to create helpful tactics to face your fear of sales and unleash your true selling potential.

Identify The Root Cause Of Your Fear

Fear comes in all shapes and sizes and has the ability to cloud your thoughts and leave you in a state of panic. Here are the common types of fear you may be experiencing with sales:

Types Of Fear

Fear of Rejection: Fear of rejection happens when you’re afraid that a potential client or customer will say “no” to your offer. You can help eliminate this fear by understanding that rejection happens and it can teach you how to improve next time.

Fear of Failure: Fear of failure happens when you don’t think you have what it takes to succeed in sales. You can help eliminate this fear by focusing on your strengths and leveraging them to help your sales process.

Fear of Calling: Fear of calling happens when you’re afraid of cold-calling or receiving calls from potential clients or customers. You can help eliminate this fear by practicing your pitch, taking calls, and writing down improvements for following calls.

Fear of Pushing Past “No”: Fear of pushing past “no” happens when the client or customer rejects your offer, but you want to close the sale. You can help eliminate this fear by thinking of the worst-case scenario, i.e., your client rejects your offer. You can also help eliminate this fear by studying sales psychology to learn how to reposition your offer to get the client to accept.

Now that you understand the types of fear associated with sales, here are some ways to work through these fears:

1. Practicing Mindfulness and Meditation: You can practice meditation by thinking positive thoughts and affirmations about yourself and the situation. For example, instead of thinking, “I won’t be good at sales,” switch your thoughts to, “I can learn how to become skilled at sales.”
2. Writing Down Your Thoughts and Emotions About Your Fear: Writing down your thoughts and emotions is a great way to process your fear so you can begin eliminating it. After writing down your fears and emotions, take a second to analyze their reasoning.
3. Do a Self-Evaluation By Asking Yourself Introspective Questions: Ask yourself questions such as, “Why am I afraid of sales?” and “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Asking yourself these questions can help you identify your feelings, allowing you to work through them.
4. Talk to a Friend or Family Member: Talking to a friend or family member about your fear of sales can provide you with advice and a release of emotions.

Reframe Your Perspective About Your Fear of Sales

To tackle your fear of sales, you could try reframing your perspective. Many people fear selling because they see it as too pushy. However, you can do a few things to help you reframe your perspective to make selling less daunting.

Focus On Helping Instead Of Selling

Shifting your perspective to view selling as helping allows you to come up with solutions to your client’s problems instead of pushing your product or service. Generally, people don’t want to be sold to; they want help.

People don’t want to be sold to; they want help.

View Sales As A Challenge Instead Of A Problem

Problems tend to make us overwhelmed and anxious. However, challenges use that anxiety to propel us forward. Viewing sales as a challenge rather than a problem makes you more likely to participate instead of shying away.

Viewing sales as a challenge rather than a problem makes you more likely to participate instead of shying away. Click To Tweet

Use Your Fear As A Tool

Try to look at fear as a tool to push you forward rather than as a barrier. Although fear may seem crippling at times, it can motivate you to take action.

Build Habits To Improve Your Sales Technique

Building habits to improve your sales technique is a great way to help overcome your fear of sales. By building habits, you can strengthen your skills, which helps improve your confidence. The more confident you are in your sales technique, the less fear you might feel around sales. Here are a few things you can do to build habits and improve your sales techniques:

The more confident you are in your sales technique, the less fear you might feel around sales. Click To Tweet

Start Small

The best way to build habits is to start small. For example, you could try working on building your rapport skills with your customers. To build this habit, you might create a series of questions to ask each client.

Follow A System

Not having a system for your sales process can lead to anxiety and fear. So, it might be beneficial to map out a system you walk through for each client. Following a system will help keep you organized, which, in turn, could prevent you from being fearful about your abilities. Here’s an example of what your system might look like:

1. Greeting the client
2. Asking them what their needs are
3. Proposing a solution
4. If a client says no, ask them why they feel that way or what would make the offer more attractive
5. If a client says yes, proceed with the offer and relate it directly to their problem
6. Prepare for the close

Following a system can help keep you organized and prevent you from being fearful about your abilities. 

Practice, Practice, Practice

The only way to develop long-lasting habits is to practice them daily. So, try to make an effort to implement these habits into your sales routine. Eventually, the more you practice, the more confident you will become in your sales technique.

The only way to develop long-lasting habits is to practice them daily. Click To Tweet

Set Goals And Track Them

Setting goals for yourself and tracking your wins can help you overcome your fear of sales by allowing you to visualize your progress. Achieving goals can increase your confidence in your abilities because it proves that you can do hard things well. Here are some examples of goals you might set:

1. Monetary Goals: If money drives you, you can set monetary goals to hit weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. If you work for a company, they may already have quotas they want you to hit. You can use those as motivation. 
2. Personal Goals: If you struggle with negotiation skills, you can make a goal to work on your negotiation skills during each sales call.
3. Professional Goals: If you want to become the top sales rep in your company, you can make a goal with actionable steps to achieve it.

Achieving goals can increase your confidence in your abilities because it proves that you can do hard things well.

Practice Practical Optimism and Positivity

Practical optimism is remaining positive in every situation because you believe good may come of it. It’s an essential skill for helping you to eliminate your fear of sales because it forces you to stay positive no matter what.

Practical optimism is remaining positive in every situation because you believe good may come of it. Click To Tweet

Positivity is key to creating habits that can help you overcome your fear of sales because you will be more likely to look for ways to improve your skills, techniques, and systems. Negative thoughts and emotions can increase your fear because they make you think the situation is worse than it actually is. So, you might consider practicing practical optimism and positivity to help you overcome your fear of sales. 

Here are a few tips to help you become more positive to help eliminate fear:

1. Replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts: Every time you have a negative thought, you could replace it with a positive one. 
2. Surround yourself with positive people: Being in a positive atmosphere lifts you up and inspires you to become more positive. 
3. Practice gratitude and meditation: Dwelling on the positive things in your life can prevent negativity and fear from creeping in.
4. Determine the cause of your negativity and try to eliminate it: Figuring out why you’re feeling negative about sales can help you discover the areas you may need to work on to reduce those negative feelings.

Final Thoughts

Fear is nothing more than an emotion that you can work towards eliminating with these steps. By taking control of fear and the emotions it may create, you’ll eventually learn to embrace challenges instead of avoiding them. Remember, we can choose to do hard things, even when they bring up fears, and with the right work ethic, we can do them well.