Fear of Rejection

Issue 010 - 2019-04-01

Lesson: Entrepreneurs have to overcome their fear of failure

Our programming team despised the sales team. They were the fast talking, smartly dressed, overconfident, testosterone alpha males. We were the geeks. Our managers would tell us: "We have sold a backup solution to our customers." It was then up to us to try and figure out what that meant and to build it for them at less cost than the sales price. There is an old joke "What's the difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman?" "The used car salesman can probably drive a car. And he knows when he's lying."

And then I started my own business.

And I was the sales team.

I've now been a salesman for 20 years and it is still terrifying. I'm sure the overconfidence of our sales team was mostly bluster. They had monthly targets that they had to achieve. When they did, their kids ate well. Other months was bread and peanut butter.

One of the salesy things I do is run Q&A webinars for my course offerings. I did two last week. You can listen to them here and here. I quite enjoyed the actual sales webinars. New customers were asking lots of questions about how my self-study courses work. I even got to share a couple of technical Java gems.

What terrified me was sending out the initial emails inviting people to join. I did not think that anyone would show up. I expected lots of complaints to the Google police. It is the fear of rejection that paralyses. I should have done this sales webinar months ago. But I kept on putting it off.

I made some sales. Not as many as I had hoped, but more than if I had not sent out the sales emails. My kids will be able to feast on roasted almond butter instead of peanut butter this month :-)

Kind regards from your friendly entrepreneur

Heinz

P.S. After writing this article, I received a request for quotation from an old customer. I had written a sales email to them a month ago. It took them four weeks to respond. These things sometimes take time. I was thinking about them over the weekend and was feeling quite dejected. Again, if I had not reached out, I would probably not have gotten this order.

Living Entrepreneurially Archive

• 012 - Crashproof Your Business
• 011 - "Was weg ist, ist weg"
• 010 - Fear of Rejection
• 009 - Quality, Reliability, Be Nice
• 008 - Be Prepared
• 007 - Riding School
• 006 - Inner Dynamo
• 005 - The Fuel Light is ON
• 004 - "I filled it in exactly as your father did"
• 003 - The Espresso Machine Guy
• 002 - "Escape is Giving Me Bad Dreams"
• 001 - The Cleaning Fluid Injection Device

Entrepreneurially Course