He tossed the ball into the air a second time, took a mighty
swing and missed again.
“Strike two on the greatest baseball player in the world!”
With a look of dogged determination, he threw the ball into
the air one last time, swung ferociously, and caught nothing but air.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “the greatest baseball
player in the world has just struck out—to the greatest pitcher of
all time.” —The Daily DoseTHE ROOTS OF FEAR
If you tend to beat yourself up, you are going to struggle in sales. If you
dream up reasons the client will say no before you even make a presenta-
tion, you will find selling difficult. If you have a morbid fear of rejection,
you will probably starve in sales. The fear of rejection is one of the great
emotional hurdles a sales professional must learn to conquer. This is not a
one-time hurdle but an every-time hurdle. You must keep yourself in ex-
cellent emotional shape, or you will find yourself tripped up—with skinned
knees and a bruised ego.
The fear of rejection can be traced to many quarters in the psyche. First,
look to your personality and temperament. I have made the observation in
the TEAM Dynamics personality classes that two of the four personality
types (Togetherness/Analyzer) struggle with rejection more than the other
two (Enterpriser/Motivator). The fear of rejection can also be a matter of
post-traumatic stress syndrome, in which the memory of a rejection earlier
in life sends you diving under the table like a war vet at the sound of a pop-
gun. The fear of rejection can also be rooted in various other fears such as
the fear of failure, fear of success, fear of humiliation, fear of not being
liked, or the fear of financial disaster. Or your fear of rejection could be a
lethal cocktail of all of the above in varying measures. Awareness of where
your fear takes root will go a long way toward overcoming it.
PULLING AT THE ROOTS
Azriela Jaffe, author of Starting from “No,” 10 Strategies to Overcome Your
Fear of Rejection and Succeed in Business,alleges that a number of underlying
fears form the soil for the fear of rejection to flourish in. These fears include:
- Fear of failure.Individuals fail to attempt selling in situations where they
do not feel safe. These individuals choose the path of least resistance.
136 SELLING WITH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE