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Where to Start
The reason sales is so hard for so many people — including me when I started out — is really simple. Fear. The fear of rejection. The fear of being let down. The fear of “no.” We, as human beings, tend to go to safety and away from things that scare us. And you know what? Sales is scary because you hear “no” more than you hear “yes.”
So the question people ask me is, “Okay well Robert, you’re so confident. I wish I was born like that. I wish I had that courage.” This wasn’t me in my twenties. When I was twenty, I was deathly afraid of my own shadow. It took me a really long time to work up the courage to be able to do sales. How do you overcome fear and the fear of rejection in order to get good at sales? You just got to keep doing it. The only way to overcome fear is by constant doing. You’ll fail the first time, but guess what? The second time, it’s just a little bit less scary. And then the third time and then the fourth time. And over time, what will happen is you’ll create habits, and those habits will create discipline. And, eventually, you’ll be able to focus on the outcome.
How to Act
Never be afraid of humility. There’s this common misconception that great salespeople are incredibly confident. From my experience, they’re confident, but they’re also very, very humble, and they’re very human. People want to buy from people. Never be afraid to be yourself. The key is not to be like me, or Mark Cuban, or Kevin, or Damon, or anybody. The key is to be the best version of yourself.
I had a sales guy that worked for me many years ago, and he used to go on sales calls with me, and he would say, “My gosh. You’re so good.” And he tried to parrot what I was doing. So one day, I took him aside, and I said, “Connor, you’ve got to be you. You’re 23 years old. You’ve never done sales. Just go in and be honest with people, and just tell them how excited you are to be there.” So we go on the next sales call, and he says, before the meeting starts, he’s like, “Mr. Crestor, I’m so excited to be here. First of all, I have to tell you, I’m so nervous. This is one of my very first sales calls. I just graduated. I hope I don’t mess it up today.” Guess what happens? The person he’s selling to has a kid. Humans tend to be very nice. They want to help you. We got the deal. It was so incredible because he wanted to help him.
Now the problem was a year later, my sales guy kept doing the same thing even though it wasn’t, he wasn’t new anymore. So you got to change your pitch and adapt, but, people want to help.