"Sales is a wonderful game," Bob stated positively. "In
fact, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I love to
sell!"
Dan, his sales manager, had asked Bob to meet with him and me at their
plush offices in Washington. Although his sales performance was stellar, his
manager had started to detect some evidence of burnout in Bob. Wanting to
prevent a good salesperson from going bad, he had asked me to administer the
Sales Preference Questionnaire to Bob. The results showed he had very little
Sales Call Reluctance—except in one area. Bob had significant amounts of Role
Rejection Call Reluctance.
After I had explained what this meant, Dan had shaken his head and smiled.
"This is not Bob," he said. "Bob is the proudest salesperson
in our office and his figures support this." He had asked me to visit
with them both to see if I could pick up on something that he had missed.
After 20 minutes, I was beginning to think that the test had gotten it
wrong this time. Bob was upbeat, positive, and showed absolutely no sign of
the secret shame of being in sales that is characteristic of Role Rejection.
I would have hired him as a salesperson in a heartbeat!
Then Bob dropped the bombshell on us. Unexpectedly, he leaned forward and
spoke in a low voice.
"How would you feel," he asked, "if every day when you got
home, your wife tells you how ashamed she is of you? How would you feel if
you heard every single day of your life that your wife was ashamed to talk
about you to her friends because you were a salesman? How would you feel if
you were told every day that you needed to get a decent job?"
He leaned back, his face drained. Dan looked at me in shock. There was a
long silence.
That Fragile Positivism
I don't know what had prompted Bob to implode that way. All I know is
that the shame and guilt about being a salesperson had finally surfaced, and
we could now deal with it.
Role Rejection Call Reluctance is very difficult to detect because it
hides behind a positive façade. However, the positivism is fragile and can be
shattered. Role Rejection Call Reluctance occurs when salespeople feel
secretly ashamed of being in sales. Even though intellectually they know that
sales is a great profession, emotionally they still feel as if they are
letting someone important down. They cover this secret shame by acting overly
positive and by deflection.
I'm Really Not A Salesperson
The first defense of the Role Rejected salesperson is deflection. They use
deflective identities and behaviors to disguise the fact that they are in
sales. They describe their jobs in flowery terms. Instead of calling
themselves salespeople, they prefer other descriptors. One used car
salesperson I know has a business card that describes him as a
"transportation consultant."
The life insurance industry is rife with Role Rejected salespeople.
Perhaps it is the industry itself that encourages this. They have moved away
from "salespeople" to other, more exotic terms, such as
"financial adviser," "estate planner," or "adviser
to the galaxy." The funeral industry is not far behind. They call their
salespeople "pre-need counselors." This industry seems to breed
Role Rejected salespeople.
The message these and other like industries are sending to their
salespeople is that there must be something wrong with selling, otherwise why
disguise it. By clothing their sales force with these deflective titles, they
seem to be saying that selling is bad. As a result, their salespeople
continue to hide the fact that they are in sales and then begin to feel shame
associated with selling.
Actually, Selling Is a Great Career—We're All In Sales!
A colleague in Australia told me about meeting a friend in a bar one
evening. They had not seen each other in years. When asked what she did for a
living, the friend went off on a 10-minute ramble about her job, thoroughly
confusing her companion. Then it dawned on her and she said to her friend,
"Oh, you're in sales!"
Once exposed as salespeople, these people tend to swing the opposite way.
They then defend the sales profession and declare it to be the noblest of all
professions. They are quick to remind us that everyone is in sales and that
the business world would not function without them. They don't realize
that the amount of passion they put into describing a simple job is a dead
giveaway as to how much Role Rejection Call Reluctance they have.
The Cost
Role Rejection Call Reluctance may not initially cost the salesperson
money. As long as they have strong motivation and goal levels, they can
usually perform at very high levels. The bigger cost is comes on the
emotional level. These folks simply do not get the same amount of pleasure
from sales as other salespeople do. They have to psyche themselves up every
morning to continue to perform at high levels. It takes a great deal of
emotional energy to get going and to keep going.
Eventually, the financial rewards no longer compensate for the emotional
distress they experience every day. That's when they walk. Without much
notice, they simply up and quit. This is what George Dudley and Shannon
Goodson call the "QWS" syndrome: Quit While Succeeding. It usually
comes as a shock to managers and colleagues. Many times, these salespeople do
not understand it themselves, but they know they must get out of the sales
profession anyway.
Another financial cost to the salespeople still in the profession is the
cost of buying motivational tapes and books. They need these to prop up their
fragile façade. George Dudley calls them motivational junkies.
What Can Be Done?
The good sales manager should be on the lookout for Role Rejection Call
Reluctance. This is one of the more compelling reasons to test veteran,
high-performing salespeople for Sales Call Reluctance. If it is lurking
there, and the sales manager knows it, then corrective action can be taken.
Sometimes, simply explaining it to the salesperson is sufficient to arrest
its further development. Sometimes a workshop is recommended.
In their book, The Psychology of Sales Call
Reluctance; Earning What You're Worth, Mr. Dudley and Ms. Goodson
tell a story called "The Parable of the New Eldorado" and how a
salesperson uses possessions to obtain the approval of people who really
don't matter. I have seen this poignant story bring tears to the eyes of
salespeople with Role Rejection Call Reluctance. The story shows how
dependent some salespeople become on the feelings of others and how this
affects their sales behavior. When they can rid themselves of this
dependence, they begin to control their Role Rejection Call Reluctance. The
result is a salesperson who finally enjoys selling.
What Is the Outlook?
In Bob's case, this emotional outburst was all it took to get him to
acknowledge the accuracy of his test results. Once he took this first step,
he was able to accept other logical steps to eventually get rid of his Call
Reluctance. It also helped that his manager was able to speak to his
wife.
Other Sales Call Reluctance articles include the following:
Call Reluctance, the Fear-Free Prospecting and
Self-Promotion Workshop, and all related terms are copyrights and/or
registered trademarks of Behavioral Sciences Research Press, Dallas, Texas.
Sales Academy, Inc., is an Advanced Authorized Dealer for the Call
Reluctance® Program. Frank Lee is an international expert on Call
Reluctance®. He can be reached at (800) 898-3743 or at