I have a friend who told me the other day that he is afraid to make sales calls. He doesn’t know how to process when someone tells him no. He asked for my advice.
In personal life and in business life there are times to coddle someone and then there are times to be brutally honest with the person. My advice to him is going to fall into the latter category.
Being a salesperson with no formal education with a speech impediment, I have learned a few things about rejection. I also do not have a lot of sympathy for a healthy, educated full grown man who will let the fear of rejection dictate his financial future and that of his family.
Last night I was thinking about what my advice would be to this person and here is what I would tell him. I would tell him, picture your adult children coming to you for advice on how to deal with fear and picture yourself giving them advice based on how you overcame it. There is not a motivational book or speech or meeting you could go to that would be a better teacher than just being perfectly honest with yourself.
We all have a story to tell about our lives and we all get to decide how we want the story to go so that when our children do come to us for advice, and they will, we will be able to say, based on my experience, this is what I would do. KT