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How Do You Deal with Sales Disappointment?

How Do You Deal with Sales Disappointment?

Sales

I had a setback yesterday. It wasn’t with a customer, but with a sale I was making to my homeowners' association. Now I’m dealing with the disappointment. Maybe my efforts can help you deal with one of your sales disappointments.

I was part of a group of homeowners who wanted a fiscally irresponsible homeowners' association board to stop their efforts to bankrupt the HOA. They decided unilaterally to join the president of the HOA’s personal lawsuit despite a majority of homeowners who didn’t want to.

The board wouldn’t disclose their litigation budget. The homeowners were only able to learn expenses  after their constant demands for information forced the board to disclose their spending of over $30,000 in legal fees in just a few months. As of today we still don't know their budget.

We spent many hours gathering signatures for a petition to recall and elect at a special homeowners’ meeting an interim board to replace them. That’s when the kangaroo court took over.

Our ballot was amended by the board. The board gave inaccurate voting instructions to the members. We came close, but missed by 10 votes to recall the entire board. We did succeed at removing the president.

We lost. I’m saddened. Here’s how am I dealing with this loss.

  1. I’m surrounding myself only with people who support me.  

I have a great husband who asked me today how I was doing. His concern meant so much to me. Pain goes away much faster when you have people who care about you and for you. Do you have people who you can talk with when you get disappointed in sales?

  1. What did you accomplish or learn?

We did accomplish removing the president who led this board on this financially destructive path. That’s something. Maybe in your sales efforts you made additional contacts or learned a strategy to avoid going forward. Remember that for your next selling challenge.

  1. Look at the positive.

We did remove the president who misled voters with a campaign flyer for his election to lower HOA dues. He never disclosed on the flyer that he had already filed a lawsuit against another homeowner in the neighborhood. Does that sound unethical to you? Do you think that might have changed a few votes had voters known he did that? I do. The positive is that he’s gone. The positive is that the entire neighborhood knows what an unscrupulous, unethical, untrustworthy individual he is.

I’m ready to move on. You have to move on with disappointment, too. This would be a great online discussion to have if you have additional ideas to help others move through sales disappointments.

Profile: Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling, a sales training and sales consulting company. She works with business and sales professionals to increase sales and earn larger profits. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. Maura focuses on sales strategies and tactics that lead to better sales results. Maura is a sales expert for WomenSalesPros. She is part of their group of top sales experts who inspire, educate, and develop salespeople and sales teams.She speaks internationally on influence, selling skills, and strategic selling at trade association and sales meetings, demonstrating how her principles can be applied to get results. She successfully worked for over 20 years in the male-dominated oil industry with two major corporations, beginning at Mobil Oil and ending at Chevron Corp. She was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and was one of Chevron’s top five salespeople in the U.S. having sold over $9 million annually. Maura writes several columns to share her sales philosophies. She's been quoted in the New York Times, Selling Power, and Entrepreneur.