How to Overcome Your Fear of Selling and Sales

Do you hate the idea of selling or sales in your job or in your life?

Do you see sales as a way trying to get someone to do something you want them to do?

Welcome to a new way to look at selling. Welcome to the world of seeking agreement!

I hear comments from clients and businesswomen all the time that the words "sales" or "selling" or "closing the sale" or "getting new business" strikes fear in their heart. These women avoid these activities and hope someone else will handle it OR they back peddle and use a workaround to get to their objective... or fail! 

Here are some powerful insights to help liberate you from the fear of selling. 

Using a technique I call reframing, let's capture your going in beliefs and then reframe and rename the process to set you free.

Old assumptions and understanding about sales in the used-car-salesman paradigm include trickery, tactics, sleaze, sales pitches, manipulation, pressure, distrust. What would you add to that list?  When I hear women talk about trying to get someone to do something, it's assumed people have to be forced, coerced, incented, and lulled into participation.

New assumptions and mindset about sales.  Let's start by assuming that:

• all interactions with human beings in your life are conversations
• all conversations related to achieving a common goal involve seeking agreement
• all relationships involve seeking agreement IF you want to live in a world of enjoyable, healthy, and productive partnerships, teams, organizations, communities, families, marriages, friendships... peaceful, productive co-existence

Scenarios:  Let's consider these seemingly unrelated situations where you have a desired outcome to achieve.  These are opportunities to seek agreement.

1. You want to form a special team at work to help you complete a project
2. You want to have a family gathering and decide on the menu for dinner
3. You want to help your target market by offering your services
4. You want to change a fitness habit so you can be healthier and more fit (agreement with your Self)

Basics of seeking agreement.  Seeking agreement can be natural, easy and downright loving (I know, that's pretty woo woo and true). 

Imagine what might happen if you approached the scenarios above by being generous, detached from the outcome (objective), informative, curious, unassuming, caring, collaborative, creative, and open?!  This might have you asking questions, offering solutions, and equally sharing responsibility for the outcome.  This approach includes getting agreement on outcomes, expectations, methods for renegotiating when changes happen, and making decisions based on what you know today!  How's that sound?  Sound like selling?  Probably not.

You now have permission to reframe your mindset and rename that word "sales." Voila!  Your new goal is to seek agreement through collaborative conversation(s).

The day I realized these powerful shifts in thinking, it was HUGE for me.  I refer to this type of insight as a Helen Keller moment (remember when she first got the concept of language? See The Miracle Worker movie for true inspiration!) 

Now it's YOUR turn!  What do you want to achieve in partnership with others? What will success look like? Feel like? What's most important to you about the process? About the relationship?  See if you can imagine having conversations to seek agreement to reach your goals.  How might you handle the 4 scenarios above with this new mindset?  What one conversation can you use to practice this new mindset and approach this week?  Email me to share the outcome or to ask more questions.

If you are intrigued and want to integrate the "seeking agreement" mindset and behavior into your relationships at work, at work, or for your team, ask me about a 30-minute complimentary consultation on how you can get there in as little as one hour with my "How to Love Selling" program.

P.S.  This same approach works if you are you someone who tends to over commit and then do or die (usually you die!) to get it done. The concept of seeking agreement is also a tool for making commitments and later finding out that you can't deliver... due to changes in your circumstances, things out of your control, contributions from others arriving past their expected date... All these elements have one thing in common.  They all represent new information that needs to be factored into your original equation.  AND they are all an invitation for renegotiating, adapting, and seeking a new agreement!