Does Fear Prevent Salespeople From Executing Your Sales Plan?

Do you have those dreams? No, not the one where you become wealthy and can buy anything you want; the dream where you’re in the elevator and it begins a free fall from the highest floor. Or the one where you go to school without your clothes on. How about the one where you can’t control your car? How about the one where you are being pursued by a bad buy and you can’t run? These are some of the dreams that people have on a recurring basis and they tend to be quite scary while we’re having them. But, despite how real they seem and how scary they are, do those dreams prevent you from riding in an elevator, driving a car, or attending your kids’ or grandchildren’s school? Probably not.

So if these powerful images don’t get in the way of life, why do you let simple self-limiting beliefs – negative thoughts – prevent your salespeople from selling more effectively? At Objective Management Group (OMG), some of the data on more than 500,000 salespeople we have assessed suggests that most salespeople have a collection of self-limiting beliefs that would knock your socks off. These negative thoughts prevent them from executing on a range of core, sales best practices that let sales opportunities slip through your fingers, delay closings, shrink margins and maintain a skimpy pipeline. The three beliefs that burden more salespeople than any others are, “I must make a presentation”, “It’s not OK to ask a lot of questions”, and “It’s OK if my prospects shop around”. How does that make you feel?

Did a self-limting belief pop into your head just now? Was it something along the lines of, “I can’t do anything about that”? Or, “I can’t confront all of my salespeople”? Or, “Makes sense but I don’t know which self-limting beliefs they have”? Or, “That’s their problem. I just have to worry about myself”? Or, “I’ll add that to my list – I have too many bigger problems than than to worry about”? Or, “There isn’t anything I can do about that – I’m not a therapist!”?

Those are just a few examples of self-limiting sales management beliefs! Is it possible that you or your sales managers have some of them?