Do you suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia? Then today is definitely an unlucky day for you, because this means that you are afraid of Friday the thirteenth. The fear of no and the fear of Friday the thirteenth are not so different from each other, they are both psychological problems. If you fear something, you do not always act rationally, which means you say or do things you don't actually want, which is not useful in a sales conversation... In this blog we will examine the fear of "no".

"No"

It is common knowledge that salespeople fear the word “no.” In fact, it is a human trait, no one likes the word “no”. People unconsciously always look for a way to avoid pain and experience pleasure. Hearing no is never fun, which is why salespeople subconsciously try to find a way to prevent the customer from saying “no.” One of the most common mistakes is: talking a lot! Have you ever noticed that people talk more when they are nervous? That's exactly what you shouldn't do. Nature has given us two ears and only one tongue so that we can listen more than talk.

A commonly used method that many salespeople use is that they write out the sales conversation from A to Z, with the aim of depriving the customer of the opportunity to say “no”. This detailed sales conversation ensures that the salesperson speaks as much as possible to prevent the customer from finding an opportunity to say “no”. The salesperson is talking almost the entire time he is sitting at the table with the potential customer and the customer does not get around to talking.

Is this the right way?

No, because the seller does not ask questions and therefore knows nothing about his customer, so he does not know what the customer wants to be informed about. The behavior is motivated by a fear strategy to prevent the customer from saying “no”.

Solution

The only way is to accept that “no” is part of it and ask yourself why the answer was “no”. Look at the mistakes you made, learn from those mistakes so that it becomes a “yes” in the future. A really good salesperson has heard so many “no” in his life and has only become better for it!

“Sales versus marketing, who is the winner?”

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