The hardest part of pharmaceutical selling is handling negative responses or objections. A certain percentage of your physicians
are not going to prescribe your product no matter how wonderful your presentation is or how great a salesperson you are. Think
of a failed sales call as bringing you one step closer to a successful one! Your goal is to strive for excellence and aim
for worthwhile, preset objectives. Once you have made your best attempt, you need to relinquish all worries about the end
result. If there are things you'd like to change that are within your control, you must change them for the next call. Learn
to appreciate the opportunity to become better. Below are a few things you can do to overcome an unsuccessful call and improve
yourself for the future.
From failed to fabulous
Trust in yourself. We cannot know the future, so when something bad happens, we often become frightened and lose our courage. At times like
these, you need to trust in yourself and remember that one of the keys to lasting success is recognizing the opportunity to
learn from your mistakes so your next call is better than the last. When you are able to integrate this concept into your
attitude, you can more easily discard any negative thoughts that enter your mind. Your focus then shifts to searching for
the constructive side of every mishap or simply accepting your mistakes and the lessons you can learn from missed opportunities.
Improve yourself
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Keep a positive attitude. A positive attitude is one of the most important traits you can have. Most people who fail do so because they don't know
how to keep their attitudes positive on a daily basis. Every time you present your products to a physician and he does not
prescribe them, tell yourself that at least you got a chance to practice your presentation and sales skills. Learn to appreciate
the opportunity to become better. Every kind of work involves challenges, but they can all be temporary if you take control
of your thoughts and develop the right attitude. Winners are winners because they've learned to fuel their success by overcoming
their failures with a positive attitude.
Learn from failure. Every time you fail, you're that much closer to success. Success demands its percentage of failure. The key to success is
in how you handle failure. Handling failure does not come naturally; it's an acquired skill. Some of your emotions tell you
to sulk and avoid any situations that are likely to put you at risk of failing again in the future. But every sales call that
doesn't go the way you want it to is a learning experience for you. Thomas Edison, who conducted more than a thousand experiments
on filaments before he produced a practical light bulb, was once asked, "How did you keep going after you had failed more
than a thousand times?" Edison replied, "I did not fail a thousand times; I learned a thousand ways that didn't work." Like
Edison, try to look at failure and dismissal in a different light – as a learning experience that can help you change the
course of your future.
Don't panic. If you panic, things will just get worse. Remember your successes and visualize yourself making the perfect call. When you're
calm and collected, you can make the right decisions to avoid failure in the future. Failure is only temporary if you stay
in control.
Following these tips will make you a more relaxed and positive rep – whether every call is a success or not.
