Martial Arts of Sales: insecurity

Photo credits: Seppo Iivonen

Before a fight, what are you the most afraid of? When you visualize yourself losing, how is it going to happen? Are you more afraid of not being able to perform as you should or are you more afraid of your opponent and that he will be better than you expected?

How about in sales? Are you more worried about how you will perform in the sales meeting or how the prospect is going to react? Are you more afraid of the competition you are facing or that your company doesn't live up to the standards of the prospect company's expectations and other service providers? How is your level of expertise compared to the person you are going to meet up?

Are you preparing yourself against your fears or not?

Many times I hear people preparing themselves thinking only how they could be better. At the martial arts gym, they train techniques they like and feel are their strengths. In a way, there is nothing wrong with this approach, especially if it builds self-confidence. Without self-confidence it is harder to succeed. But bear in mind, that there can be universal and situational self-confidence. You might feel confident most of the time, but then let your fears take over in a tough fight against a tough opponent, who seems to be better than you.

Universal self-confidence is about you believing yourself and your skill set generally. With situational self-confidence, you base your level of self-confidence with analyzing your belief about being the likely winner or loser.

In sales, I have seen a lot of training on pitching and questioning. Pitching is helpful, in order to be able to communicate your offering clearly and understandably. With questioning, one tries to get the information from the prospect during a meeting, which will be helpful to build up a proper offer. But very often, I also see salespeople struggling with specific and most feared prospects. They might be well-known industry leaders, who's opinions are allover the media. Or they might represent a big company and have a reputation of not liking salespeople and act accordingly.

In both cases, you could start your preparations with considering first, what are you the most afraid of. What would be the worst case scenario from the start? If everything went wrong, how would that play out in the fight or in the meeting? Why would that be even possible? If you can push yourself into being afraid, well before the actual event, that will work in favor of you. Many times people feel confident during the training and lose their nerves, just before the event starts. Those who can prepare themselves well in advance, will not suffer from that at all. Therefore, the preparation with your worst fears, is the way to start with.

I am good vs I am afraid

I think most of my losses during my fighting career have happened to me since I was merely being afraid just before the fight or getting surprised during the fight. In one instance, I was to afraid to approach the opponent, due to his excellent skills. I just froze and tried to survive. He was quick and strong. The worst part was that I knew that I would be fighting him in the tournament and I could have prepared myself against him. All my preparations were about improving my skills, not preparing myself into fighting him. I cried after the fight, when I was so disappointed on my performance and me. The freight was unbearable and I was ashamed of me. From there on, I attached being afraid to being ashamed. That helped me to start mentally preparing myself way before the fight. I didn't want to look bad, which actually was my one of my biggest fear. I was more afraid of losing points than getting hurt. This revelation helped me a lot in my future career and helped me to overcome fears before a fight.

In sales, I have always prepared myself into bigger meetings. But more than once, I have got into a situation, where I should have prepared myself differently. Once, I called one of the biggest companies in Finland and actually reached the final top level decision maker on a very brief call. He asked me, why should he meet me and I gave the normal sales pitch. He replied that everyone says those things, but why should I meet you. I almost froze, but managed to say something and he was happy. I got the meeting and in the end managed to close a deal with them. Another time, I was prepared to give a perfect pitch to a second level decision maker, when I was asked to give the presentation to a C-level executive. I was in trouble, since I had thought I can easily convince the second level decision maker with my smart insights, but when the "opponent" changed, I knew I had not so strong case anymore. He had stronger background in the business than I was prepared for. I should have done my homework better and not to try to dazzle them by having too smart ideas, that were not 100% applicable to their business.

Fear of losing happens in your head, because you are not prepared for the situation, not because you are not prepared at all. There is a big difference!

Nowadays, I prepare myself from both sides. Of course, it is important to be good at what you do, whether it is martial arts or sales, but also I consider it to be equally important to prepare yourself against your opponent or your prospect. If you can picture how the fight or the meeting goes in your head and play different scenarios on your own, you don't need to be the best at what you do or know. You just need to be the best in that situation and adapt to your opponent or your prospect. Losing doesn't happen because you were bad, it happens because you weren't prepared to that specific situation. Experience helps a lot, but you can also win a single fight or close a single customer by being prepared for the situation. Therefore, don't be afraid of losing. Use the fears you have, in your favor, in order to make you better before the event, not after.

About 15 years ago, I received a call on Saturday evening, where I was explained that tomorrow at 2 pm, I should be trying to break the Guinness World Record (GWR) on the highest martial arts kick and it would be filmed for the official GWR program to be shown internationally. I know that you would want to read a fairy tale story, where I would be the hero and break the record, but I’m sorry, this is not the case. So, if that was the reason for you coming to read my blog, I have to disappoint you now, in the beginning of this post.

In my training group, there were two guys, who might had had a chance to break the record (2,94m that time), but they both were injured. I had been the contact person and thought that the record breaking attempt had been called off and had no idea, that it would be tomorrow. In training I had managed to kick up to 2,7m (I am 1,76m tall), but nothing close to the current record. If you have read my previous posts, I have written about yearly black belt test and on that Saturday, we had run 30kms in a rough terrain. My girlfriend had injured her knee and was in the waiting room at the hospital to get assistance. So you can imagine, how I felt at the hospital when the caller said that “you have to come here tomorrow and try to break the record. We have flown people from England to this attempt to be the officials of GWR monitoring the attempt and possible approving the record". I entered the train at 7 am and was at the recording studio at 11 am on Sunday morning. I knew, I had no chance of breaking the record. And with the 30kms run, I had no explosivity left, but this chance to be on tv and get the promotion for the martial art, was more important than losing my face with failed attempts. I hoped that I would break my own record, to say the least.

In sales, I have many times got into a situation, where my superior, perhaps the CEO of the company, had talked to a client and promised a very good deal. When I entered the negotiations and screened the needs of these prospects and their budget, I was in a place, where I would need to sell gold with a price of garbage. The expectations, were so high and the budget so low, that there were no chances to meet their expectations with the offer. There would have been no business for us, if I had sold with the price they were expecting. Of course, in those times, I reached out to the CEO and explained the situation, but that didn’t solve the problem. Even if he had approved the super low pricing, it would just help to close the deal, but not to make any business. We would have more likely lost some money and I would have had to come up with a lot more sales from other clients than possible, in order to recover the loss.

Even if you don’t win the price, you might still gain a lot

Both of these cases, required a lot of self-esteem. I was in a place, where I was not going to be successful and very likely a lot of (important) people, would look down on me and maybe even blame me for not succeeding. Especially, the record breaking attempt on TV was a hard part for me. I managed to kick 2,5m in the show and was very disappointed in me. I knew that there would be a lot of martial artists, who would laugh at this result. Especially, when it was announced to be the Finnish record (since nobody else had tried it, under the officials of GWR) of highest martial arts kick.

We got a lot of good exposure from the GWR show and that helped us to promote ourselves a lot. There were discussions in many internet forums, where people were laughing at the poor result. I felt ashamed about the result, when I was introduced as the Finnish record holder in different events. But the show opened us new doors for other TV performances and still gave us a lot of credibility among people, who didn’t train martial arts.

With previously explained situations in sales, where I was sitting in a table, I would not normally make. When trying to close an impossible deal, I chose to represent me as I am and not trying to sneak my way out of the situation. I tried to build the best possible solution and come up with a price, that nobody else would get, but which would still be much higher than the customer had stated with the current budget. Out of 10 situations, I was able to close 3 deals. Those that I wasn’t able to close that time, I have been able to close almost all of them later with a new solution. I knew that if I couldn’t meet the price they were expecting, I had to over-exceed their expectations of my expertise. So I put everything I had and asked for help from my colleagues to put the best offer ever built. And I prepared myself for the best performance possible, when presenting the offer to the prospects.

Mentally from rags to riches

Both of these examples played into my favor in the end, even though both cases felt like a disaster at the time. I didn’t give in. I did my best, even though, I knew that I had no chance at that time to succeed. I have had many excellent discussions during my professional working life about that GWR video. People find it on YouTube and value my performance there. With my world championships gold medal and that, people who work with me or are my customers, give me credit and admire me for my accomplishments. These help me to differentiate myself from other sales people. And in sales management, they give me a strong background of succeeding in life, which make it easier for my team to believe in me and work for me.

Moreover, I have gone through mentally tough situations, which have build up my character a lot. It would be nice to tell the story of having a Guinness World Record and closing all the big deals easily, but I consider these experiences more valuable in building my character than what I would have got from success. On the contrary, I do understand how top level athletes feel, when they disappoint their fans in big events in front of live tv or how it feels to let down your company and employees by not closing the big deal available. These all are valuable lessons and it is up to me to use the full potential given to me.

Sometimes, in martial arts you are facing an opponent, that clearly you should have no chance in winning. He is better in skill, more versatile and even quicker than you. He is even more experienced and has developed into a champion in no time. Your odds aren’t good, but there is still a chance to win with a perfect tactic. What could that be?

In sales, you might meet a person, who has much better knowledge on your business field. She has worked for years and has a great team supporting her. She has bought similar products and services and is highly valued among her colleagues from different companies. How to close a deal, when she clearly knows more than you and really into her business? You can’t afford to go down on price, what other options do you have?

Master knows the solution

My master in martial arts, explained me years ago about a tactic that not so many use in these kind of situations. He told me a story about the best goalkeeper in the world and how to score a goal against him. Often, coaches say that shoot as many times as possible and you will eventually score a goal. If you, as a hobby player, get a chance to shoot against a real pro, for instance, a goalie from NHL, you will not score, even if you get a chance to shoot 100 pucks. He will not make a mistake, because he has trained his whole life and the level his goalkeeping is so high, that by just trying, you will not succeed. Not even, if you try harder.

I was really surprised about how the story was going. I always thought, that you should just try harder and in the end, you would succeed. He asked me: “what technique would you use?” I answered: “I don’t know”. He continued: “you are right. You don’t know and that is the trick”. Then he explained that against the best opponent, you shouldn’t think about your technique, but make him insecure about his. You should try to dribble, use fake attacks and make all kinds of movements, but not really attack before you have made him nervous. The best fighters (and goalies in his example), need a feeling of winning and if you can challenge that, they become insecure. A goalie with no shots coming, doesn’t have a feeling of winning and gets frustrated. His head will turn against him in the long run and you have to be patient to get to that point.

How to apply the method in sales

In sales, don’t worry about your knowledge, challenge the knowledge of the buyer. Ask good questions and continue the discussion. Make new questions, based on the answers given and push the conversation further. Try to get to the limit of her knowledge and still push further (the questions have to be good and challenging) This will make the buyer more insecure of her knowledge and she will start to think that you know more than she does or at least that you have something that she doesn’t know about. She will end up by asking for your help. That is the right time to offer your solution and she will buy it. Too often, junior sales people start to talk about his solution and not getting the buyer thinking and questioning her knowledge. That kind of sales meeting will not result in sales and the buyer will not start trusting you as a service provider. In business, one way to build trust is to show that you have something that she needs. One way to build this need is to make her question her current solution.

What do you think? Can you pull this off? I have tried it many times in fighting and in sales. Sometimes I have succeeded, but not always. It sounds a lot easier than it is, but if you don’t try this method, you will not win an opponent who is much better than you. What do you got to lose?