Sales is a tough business, there is no denying that.

As a sales professional or entrepreneur, you are asked to put yourself "out there". You are asked to "convince" people to buy your product or service. You are held accountable to corporate and personal earning goals, all the while realizing that you don't have complete control over your results.

What's the consequence of this? You may start to think that as a salesperson, the more people like you, the more you will sell.

You believe that the more you talk about yourself, your product, or your service, the more interested your prospect will be.

And when we do this, we fail to gather critical information about the challenges our prospects are facing.

We fail to understand their budget constraints or considerations.

We fail to properly address their decision making process and their ideal timeline.

We fail to address any potential objections, whether they are practical or emotional.

When we do this, we gain a false sense of confidence in our likelihood of closing the sale.

We unknowingly bury our heads in the sand and pretend like as long as it wasn't talked about, it doesn't exist.

So when we are being told 'no' and we ask why, the prospect offers up new information that we didn't previously know about.

Then we get upset with the prospect for not telling us about it! But guess what? Based on how you had interacted up to that point (making it all about you, not them) they didn't want to tell you. They assumed you would try to "overcome their objection" in a self-serving way.

Don't learn new information while being told, 'no'.

Make sure you take the time to truly understand each aspect of their challenge, its impact, and their buying process.

Take time to surface or directly address any potential objections. Lead with love and abundance.

You won't close every deal, obviously.

But if you are able to enter into a "decision" conversation and you know exactly why you will win the business and exactly why you potentially wouldn’t win the business, you have given yourself an opportunity to do every ounce of your 50%.

So remember, you will be told 'no'. It happens to all of us.

But make sure you aren't learning new information in the process…