One of our clients offers sales enablement training and software to help organizations improve their sales processes and individual rep performance. Of their extensive 30-minute podcast library, during which they discuss various sales challenges, the number one downloaded podcast is entitled “Overcoming Sales Fear.”

Anyone who has ever sold anything, from Girl Scout cookies to multi-million dollar enterprise software, can understand this challenge. One of the primary causes of sales fear is the fear of rejection. Nobody likes to get shot down. And, related to this fear is the anxiety that comes from wasting people’s time.

Who would ever want to make a cold call? Imagine calling a total stranger at home, attempting to make a personal connection in a matter of seconds, and then asking them for money! It’s bizarre, totally inorganic; yet it happens all the time.

Business-to-business sales reps experience this same anxiety when they call into an organization. The person on the other end of the line didn’t ask for them to call. There’s no relationship established. And blind email blasts are no different. They are, in fact, wasting the customer’s time. No wonder sales reps struggle to overcome sales fear!

Customer voice selling eliminates this fear by fundamentally changing the way organizations engage with prospects.

1) Intimately understand what the customer cares about

It sounds so simple, but I’m always amazed at how few companies truly understand their customers’ urgent pains. Many executives think they do, but few companies have done the hard work required to get there. Even fewer can crisply articulate their value proposition aligned with those urgent pains.

If you do go to the trouble of intimately understanding what your customer cares about, the fear of wasting their time quickly vanishes. They want to talk to you!

2) Engage the customer on their terms

Once you have an intimate understanding of your customers’ urgent pains, everything you do should help solve them. One way to do this is to create strong, value-added content. Make it available to your target customers for free through channels they frequent (i.e., blogs, associations, social media sites that speak directly to their pains).

Let your content do the selling for you. If it’s good enough, it will.

3) Have two-way “conversations”

If you’re genuinely trying to solve customer pains, through generating and publishing value added content that helps them, customers will begin to engage you. You should then establish channels that promote two way conversations. Facilitate discussion groups rather than make presentations. Build communities vs. amass customer rosters. Have conversations rather than execute sales calls.

When you truly embrace Customer Voice Selling, there’s no room for sales fear. Why would you be afraid of helping customers?

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