Is Uncertainty Challenging Your Claim to Success?

The French writer Anatole France once said: “We live between two dense clouds, the forgetting what was and the uncertainty of what will be.” Recent events in the Middle East make the cloud of uncertainty grow darker. During times of uncertainty, customers tend to avoid making decisions, cancel purchasing plans and revise payment schedules on existing purchases. Salespeople find themselves working harder, but many tend to get fewer sales and end up discouraged or doubtful about their future.

How do we deal with the negative force of uncertainty?

Uncertain times divide customers and salespeople into two groups. Eighty percent of all customers will delay making decisions and wait for the world to settle down before they will take the next major step. Twenty percent of all customers view times of uncertainty as an opportunity to move forward with new plans, ideas and strategies. Eighty percent of all salespeople will allow uncertainty to erode their sense of purpose. They conform to the prevailing mood and, as a result, they begin to doubt their abilities, lose business and miss valuable opportunities. These salespeople lose sight of what William Shakespeare wrote about the effects of doubt. “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” Twenty percent of all salespeople, however, view uncertainty as a great opportunity for pursuing and getting more business. Their optimistic attitudes constantly open new doors for them and they find new business where most salespeople fear to look.

What can we attempt in a market ruled by uncertainty?

1. We can’t change the world, but we can adapt to it. We need to begin by accepting uncertainty and avoid adding to it. Accepting uncertainty stops its ravenous growth.

2. We can’t change feelings of uncertainty in our customers; we can, however, change our own feelings of uncertainty to feelings of confidence. Our own confidence is the best psychological weapon we can deploy to help our customers focus on our ideas and solutions to their problems.

3. In order to maximize our chances for success, we can utilize our selling time in a more focused way. Here are several quick ideas:

a) Eliminate the subject of war, politics and negative current events from your conversation topics. These subjects tend to arouse high interest, but they kill valuable selling time and negatively affect your prospect’s attitude.
b) If your customer brings up the subject, lead the conversation back to the business at hand.
c) Reduce the amount of time spent with customers who habitually complain about these uncertain times and forever delay making decisions. While the average salesperson reduces the number of calls made after meeting with an energy-draining, stalling customer, top performers intensify their prospecting efforts and instead see more customers. Make the law of averages work for you.

4. We can’t expect our customers to remember the high price of indecision during times of uncertainty. It is our responsibility to help them see beyond their mental roadblocks and help them to restore their vision. Effective salespeople will skillfully remind their customers of their dreams and goals and help them focus on a bright future.

Uncertainty in selling can be managed. It is a normal part of our work. The tricky part is that uncertainty can contaminate our attitudes. The more we fear it, the more it paralyzes us. The more we accept it as a challenge to be overcome, the more it will help us move forward. Salespeople who refuse to get swept away by feelings of uncertainty are the ones who win sales and profit from the wholesale “head in the sand” attitudes of their fear-filled competitors. Uncertainty calls for a simple answer to a simple question: Do you choose to react like 80 percent of all salespeople? Do you choose to stay in the middle of the road and get run over? Or do you choose to respond like 20 percent of all salespeople and plow your way to new opportunities with a positive attitude and a strong sense of purpose? Remember Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s words: “If you put off everything till you’re sure of it, you’ll get nothing done!” Get going.