“I Don’t Believe I Can Sell”

“I Don’t Believe I Can Sell” That one sentiment that at best holds people back. At worst it can kill a business.

Even if some of your sales team are not saying this out loud, my experience is that several of them will be thinking it. I’d wager that if your company is not hitting its sales targets, at least 50% of the reason why will be because, whoever’s job it is to sell, they won’t believe that they can. And by carrying that belief around with them all day, it will directly affect their results.

I know many who work full time in sales for large companies and who have significant inhibitions around selling. Deep down that dreaded inner voice casts doubt on their ability to succeed in sales.

Join the club
So this week I just wanted to get it out there that you’re not alone! There’s a whole army of people out there whose job it is to sell, but when it comes to the crunch, they have severe doubts in their ability to prospect, canvass, generate rapport, overcome objections, cold call, close and so on.

For anyone who has reservations about their ability to sell — be in no doubt, it will show in terms of performance and of course results. For example, if any of your team believe – either consciously or unconsciously – that “the customer doesn’t really want to be bothered right now with information about my product”, their communication, either verbal or written, will definitely indicate this lack of confidence to your customers and prospects – and they won’t buy.

The wrong solution
So what do your team members think about themselves? What do they believe about their sales ability? What do they truly believe about the products they’re selling?
When many people fall short at selling, the real reasons for this failure rarely get discovered. As a result, product knowledge training usually gets prescribed to remedy the problem. Or sales process training. Maybe presentation skills. Maybe team building. Leadership. Time management.

Look again. There are two main reasons why people do not reach their potential when selling. And inner limiting beliefs about their core ability to sell is one of them (I’ll save the other for another week!).

There is a ‘cure’
You can start by noticing where your team members incur the most resistance to selling. Some areas of selling they’ll probably enjoy, some they’ll detest. The ones they detest will usually be those that, when they think about it, they just don’t believe they are any good at.
Once you’ve analysed these behavioural trends, you can start to come up with an action plan to counter these limiting beliefs.

The one thing you can’t do is push this under the carpet. It won’t do your peace of mind any good — and it won’t do your company any good. The UK is about to blast its way out of an economic slump and you need to make sure everyone’s on board the recovery train and not left at the station.

In short…you need a team of competent – and brilliantly confident sellers in 2014.

Next action?
If you want to explore further, drop me a private email to [email protected] and I can send you some complimentary information to help you (too much to print here).
In the meantime if you’ve got five minutes to spare, watch a short video of me talking about limiting beliefs – here’s the link

Yes…it’s about the psychology of selling
Until next time
Leigh