Why Do You Really Fear Selling?

You avoid asking for a coffee meeting with someone because the idea of having to sell your value to them is uncomfortable, intimidating, or downright frightening.

But why?

Your response is, "Fear of rejection." OK. Fine. But that is the easy way out, and it's not the truth. Or at least, not the complete truth.

After thirty years of watching people who hate to sell (myself included, for a long stretch there), I've noticed the thing we're actually afraid of rarely has anything to do with hearing no. It's something different. Something more. Actually, four things.

Four fears. Understand them each and recognize which one, or ones, you have. If it helps, I have all four.

Here they are, so you can start noticing which are yours:

• Fear of Inauthenticity. That wasn't me in that conversation.
• Fear of Being Manipulative. What if I talk them into something they didn't actually want?
• Fear of the Relationship Cost. I'd rather leave money on the table than damage a connection.
• Fear of the Verdict. What if they say no and it means my work isn't good enough?

We're going to take these one at a time. Today, the first one. The one most people feel first and have the hardest time putting a finger on.

Fear of Inauthenticity

This isn't the fear of a bad outcome. It's the fear of who you have to become to get the good one.

You've likely felt this way before. It's the moment in a sales conversation when you hear yourself say something that sounds like a line. When your enthusiasm crests just a little too smoothly, technically true but somehow performed. When you ask a question and realize halfway through that it wasn't really a question; it was a maneuver. And the worst part? You're aware of the maneuvering even as you're doing it. Now you're performing AND watching yourself perform. Yuck.

I know this one from the inside. There was a version of me that showed up "on" for a sales conversation, and a different, quieter version that drove home afterwards. I replayed what I had said, and wondered why it came out sounding like someone else's script. There was a gap between the two versions of me. It was a problem. I didn't like the feeling at all, but what was I feeling?

I was feeling inauthentic. In this scenario, psychologists call it an identity threat. Fancy term for something simple: when you know exactly who you are and someone asks you to act against it, it costs you something. It's not weakness. It's not being too sensitive. It's your identity working exactly the way it's supposed to.

So, if you reframe it, you can work it out and recognize when you are being authentic or inauthentic.

As entrepreneurs, we often try a little bit too hard to make the sale. I mean, each sale is a representation of not only the product we have created, but also of our own self. Of course, we take it personally. We try harder, but we try too hard sometimes. This leads to us acting as someone that we are not.

Now that you are aware of it, in the future, I hope that you will begin to feel this ahead of time. When you feel that lump in your throat, or the tightness in your chest, just stop and tell yourself to be yourself. Not to read a script. To not even try to sell.

Simply starting a conversation with questions that keep the conversation going, and that help guide the buyer to recognize their needs, is what we are after.

But tell me, does this fear sound familiar to you? If so, let me know. We'll cover each of the next three fears in upcoming articles.

This article first appeared in my LinkedIn newsletter, Approachable Entrepreneurship.

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How to Sell When You Hate to Sell is built for exactly this feeling. The N.I.C.E. method replaces the script with genuine questions, so the person in the sales conversation is the same person who drives home afterward.

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