Sales Training – Salespeople Tips on Crossing the Barbed Wire Fence of Sales Reluctance

Unlike real barbed wire being cheaper, easier and quicker to use to get results to better control livestock and land, sales reluctance is costly, stubborn and slows down a salesperson’s success. If a salesperson’s product or service is that valuable, a salesperson will want to have various ways to cut through and strengthen their self-promotion. 

Go under. Barbed wire is a wall without being a wall, just like reluctance is a sales barrier which may not be recognized. Reluctance commonly shows up as fear of rejection, failure or being perceived as an impostor and pervades all parts of the selling process. Research by Behavioral Sciences Research Press has found that for sales call reluctance, there is usually a specific limited reason. Find out what causes your particular reluctance, then find a way to get it under control. 

Cover it with a blanket and climb over it. Rather than become entangled in the barbed wire of sales reluctance, identify your issues and set an action plan to get over it. Do you have an underlying belief that salespeople are scammers? When I lead sales training workshops I often ask, “What words would you use to describe salespeople?” A long list of negative words like, dishonest, pushy, doesn’t listen, start to be spoken. When you are reluctant about follow-up, do you procrastinate to avoid seeming pushy? Consider changing that the belief to how what you have to offer brings great value to people and you owe it to them to help them. 

Cut the wire. Treat reluctance, like barbed wire, with respect. It could be that a salesperson’s reluctance is there for good reason. Sometimes it stems because salespeople fear losing someone’s approval. In working with one of my clients, once we put notes together for a sales script, they were able to call current clients and ask for referrals. Now it helped that on the first call they actually got some additional business, but they cut the wire and got into a confident calling state knowing that they would actually gain approval by their current clients. Help yourself with an approach that helps you to change what you say to yourself. 

Circumvent. If at all possible get over sales reluctance, this barbed wire of selling, quickly. You may not be able to get around it by yourself particularly if you have been plagued by it for years. This may mean hiring a sales coach, enrolling in sales training or finding an outside means to help raise self-confidence in the areas of sales reluctance.

If you have any fear of self-promotion, think you bother people when you follow-up, or even find yourself procrastinating and thinking you are lazy on high priority sales activities, be sure you have good tools to get over, go around and cut sales reluctance. You don’t have to stay inside the barbed wire. With awareness that you suffer from some sales reluctance, you can find a method to – cut the barbed wire of selling.