Why don’t you like to cold call?  I am making the assumption that you don’t like to call people, you don’t know because most of you have told me you hate it. But, if you get down to it why? Why do we all hate doing this? It’s because of fear, fear of rejection, fear of bothering people, fear of making a pest of ourselves, fear that we can’t do it right and fear that we will mess it up.

The fact is that the fear factor is what keeps most of us  from being successful. How we overcome fear we succeed, it’s really that easy isn’t it? When we screw up our courage, and get out there and try, generally we do in fact, succeed. Its just getting over that fear and doing something  about it, that is the hard part.

Overcoming fear has always been of great interest to me, especially when I am doing some sales training, so why when I saw this neat little book called “Selling Boldly” By Alex Goldfayn, I knew I had to buy and read it so that I could do what I normally do, steal some ideas from the book and pass what I learned of to the rest of you fraidy cats.

Here then, from this fine new book are some of the ways that we can overcome fear and start selling as successfully as we should, and can.

1. Become optimistic: remember that you are offering a valuable solution, a solution that your customers are happy to get. Sure, it is not easy at first with new customers, why should it be? They don’t know you; they don’t know your product and most of all they have no idea what your going to be able to do for them. But all you have to do is remember how happy your current customers are. And if they are not you have a worst problem. Build  your confidence and your optimism on the basis that you have already delivered this same product to a whole slew of customers who not only love it ,but are grateful to you for selling it to them. Always expect the best whenever you are making a sales call because your optimism shows, even through the phone.
2. Believe in your product: if you don’t believe you have the best product on the market today, you are not doing to be able to sell it. If you believe in your product so completely, you will feel that you are doing your prospects and your customers a great favor by introducing them to your product. You just know that this product will make their life so much better, that they should in the end be thanking you for selling it to them.
3. Let your customer sell for you: If your product is truly a great product, your customers are going to want to tell other people about it. They are going to become your best salespeople. A customer talking about you and your products is much more credible than you talking about yourself and your products. The customer has no vested-interest, except for bragging about how smart he is for using your products. So smart, that he wants everyone else to know about it.
4. Ask them to talk about you: don’t just sit back and let your happy customers talk about you, that’s nice, but much too passive, ask them to do it for you. Ask them for testimonials. If they are as happy as they seem to be, they will gladly write you’re a testimonial. But make sure you get their permission to use their testimonials, for your marketing. Use them on your web site, and in your printed literature, and of course, in your social media. There is nothing sweeter than one of your customers talking about how happy they are to be dealing with you and using your products.
5. Build on your success: Once you get your mojo going, do not let up. Winning inspires more winning. We’ve all been on winning streaks where everything us going right, so right that’s its scary. Some of us tend to blame this on sheer luck. But it’s not luck actually, it is just hard work and persistence. We have all heard that old adage, “the harder I work the luckier I get.” and the reason they call it an adage is because it is true. It’s as simple as this. If you get off your butt, stop being scared, get out there and start meeting people and applying everything you know you will succeed, and once you start succeeding you will get some great breaks and some of those will seem like luck. But actually, they are not. They are simple the results of your hard work.

Please always remember that fear is a state of mind, designed to slow you down. Don’t let it. There is nothing more satisfying than overcoming your fear with the courage that you have in you. It’s only common sense.