“Safety is the final danger…”
–RUMI
Every day, a sales professional is faced with danger–not physical danger–emotional danger. Think about it. Fear of rejction. Fear of loss of deals. Fear of non-acceptance. You can discount these feelings, but that only serves to make them more paralyzing.
So what? How do you change? Move through them.
We’ve always taught that the way “out of your comfort zone” is to move through the danger. But, that sounds scary. It can be but only if you fail to reconstruct reality.
The reality is that these kinds of dangers won’t kill you. They WILL make you stronger. So how does one reconstruct reality? Simple. Each of these dangers has one thing in common. Do you know what it is?
It has to do with the orientation of your reality. In all of these cases, the dangers are all ME oriented. We are all so concerned with how “we” look, how “we” will be thought of that we get consumed with fear.
No mention is made of the real issue and that is ‘how does our fear affect our prospect?’ A true sales professional is able to ‘set the ego aside’ long enough to do what’s right FOR THEIR PROSPECT. Begin a list (yes, another list). On that list, write down how your fear affects your ability to solve the prospect’s problem.
When you take yourself OUT of the equation, you’re left with a “you orientation.” And that, friends is the way to move past your fear and expand your comfort zone.
Easy? Yes. Simple? No. But it’s a start. RUMI was right–safety is a danger. When you feel the fear, you have a choice–shrink to safety–or reconstruct reality to allow you the power to move through it.