Inc. Magazine ran a great article on the psychology of the salesperson. The article’s premise is that a good salesperson is a happy loser. This simply means that they don’t mind rejection and they can bounce back from a loss more quickly than others. This is interesting in itself, because you usually hear that salespeople need to be highly competitive, but competitive people often take losing pretty hard. My daughter (she’s 7) hates to lose. She takes it bad when she does, and tends to avoid games that she doesn’t think she can win.
Be a Better Loser
I am working with my daughter on how to be a better loser. It has always been my opinion that you need to be able to lose at something if you are going to be happy in life. If you get physically upset at losing a game of Parcheesi, what is going to happen when you lose at bigger, more important, games in life? Now I am beginning to see that handling losing well can help you when you need to make sales. A big part of being good at losing is being willing to jump right back in and try again.
Finding a Way to Win
Here’s a quote from the Inc. article, The Secret of Sales Success, where it is talking about how good salespeople first dealt with rejection as a child:
What we find with good salespeople is that that first no stimulated them. It didn’t make them want to give up. It made them want to find another way.
Finding another way is so crucial to sales success. As a small business owner, you aren’t in a position where you can just try once and give up. You need to work at it, approach the problem from different angles, and eventually find a way to make the sale.
Lose Your Way to Winning
I am pretty strong in this (which is probably why I like the article so much). Losing isn’t a problem for me. If I lose, I usually want to jump right back in and try again. I think I should thank my dad for this. As a kid, I grew up playing Ping Pong, first on a sheet of plywood, then on a real table when we could afford it. My dad and I especially loved to play. My dad is very competitive in his own right, and he was not the type to let me win. So, time and time again he would beat me at Ping Pong. His greatest skill was finding someone’s weakness at the Ping Pong table and exploiting it.
Long story short, since I kept coming back, I eventually got strong where I once was weak. Eventually my dad couldn’t find any weaknesses to exploit, and I have dominated him and just about anyone else I play to this day. This never would have happened if I didn’t accept the importance of losing and feed the competitive spirit of wanting to get back in there and try again.
Get Back in There
That is the true competitive spirit a good salesperson needs. When you are selling, you cannot be devastated by a loss. Instead, you must be motivated to get back at it and try again. You need to find it challenging and energizing.
I think this is a good template for a successful salesperson, and a successful small business owner who so often has to wear that sales hat. Get good at losing, and you will eventually get good at winning. I just hope my daughter can one day look back on all of the times I beat her in games and be thankful that I taught her a valuable lesson. Losing is just part of the fun of playing.
photo credit: tehusagent
