Negative feedback is a relatively systematic part of the sales profession. Prospective clients don’t always respond to your pitches positively, and managers focus more on hitting the numbers than optimizing processes. So to survive and thrive in sales, you need thick skin.
Even though all that is common knowledge, many sales teams consider failure as their biggest nemesis, and this inability to accept and admit disappointments increases the probability of their recurrence.
Therefore, sales executives must create an encouraging culture where people learn from their mistakes. Visionary leaders enable their sales teams by changing the company culture, leveraging technology, and fostering trust.
40% of companies that failed to achieve their sales objectives in 2020vow to grow and learn from failures, and they are better off for it.
Here are some ways to reframe your failure into unlimited growth opportunities:
Create A Psychologically Safe Environment for Sales people
Give your sales team an emotionally safe environment where they can give and receive critical, candid, and frequent reviews without hesitation. Building this robust internal team culture requires you to speak authentically and directly to one another, whether statements are critical or positive.
In addition, it is necessary to encourage psychological safety, also referred to as “social sensitivity.” This, in turn, empowers the sales personnel to speak with credibility and firmness, irrespective of how critical the feedback may be.
This can also help them look at failures in a positive light, creating potential opportunities to reinforce your team’s morale.
Embrace, Learn, And Grow from Failure for Software Growth
While their success should always be celebrated, your sales teams must also learn to deal with failure at its worst.
Set the tone and remind your team to do something every day that makes them uncomfortable. Embrace the “fail often and fail fast” mentality, so it stops stinging as much.
Make failure a part of your sales process by focusing on innovation and risk-taking. This takes away the disappointment and humiliation and leaves some critical lessons that’ll also come in handy in the future.
Failing at something indicates a great way to find out what doesn’t work so you can find other methods that get the desired results faster. That is why business and sales failures can often be practical and even essential routes to helping you master the art of closing more deals.
Use Automation and Technology to Provide Feedback
Technology plays a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of your sales training efforts. For example, deploying an automated feedback system for all customer-facing functions allows you to fuel both customer and sales success. This also makes failure sting less by turning it into an opportunity to learn more and pivot towards more profitable methods.
Moreover, it helps the sales personnel stay mindful of the current goals, concentrating on what’s most important. While dealing with failure isn’t easy, learning to act on critical feedback can fuel improvements in various aspects of the sales process, enabling sales growth.
Wrapping Up
Setbacks can be stressful and highjack your thinking, keeping you from chasing your desired goals and objectives. However, mustering up the courage to own them and learn from your failure will allow you to pivot onto solid ground for potential opportunities.
So, reframe your failures into worthwhile learning experiences that help you with sales growth significantly.
At Sales Search International, we are in the business of knowing our clients’ needs, their sales cultures, where they are in the market—and where they want to be. Through expert software sales recruiting, we provide access to the passionate software salespeople who are a vehicle for business development.