On
Friday, one of my coworkers remarked to me that I was hyped up after a great
call with a prospect. Indeed, if a sale did happen, it’d be a really great
deal. However, I noticed that once he said that, I tempered my excitement. I
started remembering my past experiences…
In my book, I have a chapter
titled, “Sales is HARD”, and within it, I advise readers to “temper excitement
when a prospect says he will buy till two weeks after a check clears”. This is
what I started to remember when my coworker told me I was excited.
Thinking
about this recently — this enthusiasm and expectation “mitigation” process I
have. It’s not fun. In fact, I don’t like it at all. Though, yes, there is reason
for adding caution, it also creates apathy towards potentially great things.
Without expectations, excitement wanes (for me and for others). There’s an
armor and defensiveness against being let down by a failed close and vulnerability.
Experience
has a tendency to temper excitement and put up walls of “this must happen in
order for me to be excited”. I go through a series of “qualification” questions
to validate even my own ideas.
·
Is
this really a better solution than X, Y, or Z?
·
Customer
acquisition will be too hard — forget it.
·
Is
this at least 5X better than the incumbent?
I’ve
realized experience has a tendency to not only protect me from “improbable”
success, but it also paralyzes me from even starting. Tempering my enthusiasm
takes the joy out of entrepreneurship. It makes sales less fulfilling.
So
sure, there are advantages to limiting excitement early on. However, being a
little excited now and then and setting some expectation of success can give me
the excitement that brought me here in the first place. It gives me boosts to
power through the lost opportunities.
Comments
Post a Comment