3 skills you learn in Sales that will set you up for life.
Dealing with rejection and loss
Grit & Determination
How to talk to anyone, about anything, anytime
Dealing with rejection & loss
Rejection is part of life, so the quicker you learn the skills to deal with it, the happier you will be. Most people experience having a partner or friend decide they don’t want to spend time with us anymore or we are turned down from a job we desired and predicted we would get. It’s a really painful experience when something you desire deeply, doesn’t reciprocate it.
Improving a skill largely comes down to practice (repetition). Everyone is born with a certain level of natural ability they begin at (nature), then any improvement is down to practice (nurture). The skill of dealing with rejection is no different. In most b2b sales roles, if you can convert 1 in 10 phone calls to a meeting then that is considered very successful, so that’s 9 out of 10 calls ending in the other person not agreeing to what you had hoped to get from the engagement. Then from the opportunities you explore beyond a first meeting, if you win 30% of them, that is typically considered a strong ‘close rate.’ Multiply this over even 3 years in the profession, and you can quickly understand how often you have to accept being rejected and losing a sale to a competitor or another decision.
Whilst it’s never easy (particularly when you have poured months and sometimes years into a sales process), it undoubtedly gets easier to cope with and accept over time. This places you at a distinct advantage to other when faced with rejection and loss in all other aspects of your life.
Impenetrable Grit & Determination
Grit by dictionary definition means “courage & resolve: strength of character.” It’s the secret sauce that is paramount to dealing with any challenge life throws at you. People with high levels of Grit are the ones who seem to make the hard in life look easy. Like many professions, B2B sales is super competitive. You are likely going to get beaten going for what you thought was your ideal b2b sales job, then when you find it, you will get beaten in sales processes (deals) by your competitors.
Regardless of how much talent you have and how hard you work, everyone in sales has poor-performing months, quarters, and even years – as there are so many factors outside of hard work and talent that can contribute to success. Poor performance (depending on the style of business & leader) typically comes with the pressure to improve your performance and find ways to do things better, to evolve as a professional & person.
As the saying goes, pressure makes diamonds. In the same theme as ‘dealing with rejection & loss,’ if you stick with your career in b2b sales and make it through those first few years (which are by far the toughest), you will undoubtedly have turned up your grit & determination dials. Thus better preparing you to deal with all of life’s other challenges that come your way.
Advanced Communication skills – how to talk to anyone, about anything, at any time
Whether you like it or not, your communication skills have a huge determination on how your life plays out. They help you find a partner and friends of your choosing. They help you secure, retain, and improve employment opportunities. They ultimately enable you to create, maintain and grow happy & healthy relationships with people in your life. Just like a muscle, the more you use them, the stronger they get.
The art of B2B sales is the consistent ability to influence & negotiate with others. This can be both with your prospective customer and internally with your own colleagues & leaders. Effective communication is required on a daily basis across all channels – email, telephone, social media & in person. So, through the repetition of the communication required in a B2B sales role (and learning from experienced colleagues) you will become a highly effective communicator if you spend time in this profession. This will help you in all of your personal relationships and even with your children (should you choose that path in life).
One of my goals entering into this profession was to be comfortable (and capable) of talking to anyone, about anything, at any time. And after more than 15 years, I feel I am well on track to achieving this life goal. It makes every social interaction all the more enjoyable when you know in yourself you are going to be able to handle it with relative ease and confidence.