How I learned it from a failed sales call.
“I mean I don’t know you from Adam.”
That’s what I heard from the deep voice on the other side of a sales call I had anticipated for weeks.
Let me take you back a few weeks before that phone call.
I had emailed a bunch of executives after learning an email outreach process from a $25 Udemy class taught by Scott Britton. I told my brother, “yeah I’m just going to email these peeps and see if I can get them on a call.”
I created my list in an Excel file. On it, was the head of GE Africa. An American, based out in South Africa.
I typed out my emails, copied and pasted. All 72 emails. Changed the company name and first names. I updated my little Excel tracker.
I came back to my inbox the day after.
Among all the emails. “Great to hear from you, Nifemi. I’m copying the head of GE Nigeria to follow up with you.”
“Oh snap! People actually responded.”
The Nigeria head followed up. “Let’s talk next week, here’s my number.”
On the call. I introduced myself. Everything was going well. 3 minutes into the call, it disconnected.
Damn!
I’m pacing back and forth. I get a new call from a British number (+44). It’s him again. He was on a business trip. I decided to start again from my intro.
“Well, as I said it’s a pleasure to meet you, and..”
He cut me short: “Yes, yes. I’ve heard all that. Get to the point. How can you help GE?”
Yepa! I began fumbling.
That call deteriorated like a hibiscus flower in the sahara desert.
It could make a top episode of “all-time sales call gone wrong.”
He proceeded to tell me about how I had succeeded in wasting his time. He expressed his irritation in my lack of full preparation, reminding me that he only took this call because of his boss.
My last hope was full disclosure and honesty. I said, “Look, I’m a young entrepreneur and I’m reaching out to technical teams to figure out how I can help them.“
That’s when he softened his tone. “Why don’t you come back when you’re ready.”
I got off the call. Finally exhaled. “Wooh! That was tough.”
I followed up. He never responded.
Later I told my cousin about the call. I said: “Now that the head of GE has rejected me, what’s the worst that can happen. I didn’t even expect them to respond to start with.”
I realized then that sometimes you just need to rip the bandage off.
The exposure therapy most aspiring entrepreneurs avoid
The fear of failure has damaged so many dreams.
It’s the reason why so many people don’t start.
The fear that your business would not take off, stops most people from even trying in the first place.
“There wouldn’t be an audience for your writing, so I wouldn’t even start a draft.”
“People would mock me, no need to share that post.”
The reality is that the fear of failure is a thousand times worse than failure itself.
I have spent time with a lot of published authors who didn’t sell too many books or people that started businesses that ended up not going too far.
One thing I’ve noticed is that none of these people ever regretted starting.
I’m yet to meet a single person that has said: “I wish I didn’t start that business.”
Even if the business failed, they usually focus on what they learned and the perspective they gained. There is so much learned from exposure to the activities you might be avoiding.
Failure isn’t the challenge, it’s the fear of failure that’s a bigger challenge, and your brain plays it up to be bigger than it actually is. That call with the GE executive could have gone a lot better. I could have been more prepared. But I didn’t even expect a response from my email.
That exposure made me more thoughtful about reaching out because I realized that people actually responded to my emails. My exposure with him during the call made me learn I had to get clearer with how I could help his business because that’s all he cared about in the limited time he actually gave me.
I learned from that experience. 12 sales calls later, I landed my first enterprise deal.
I had to start somewhere, and it wasn’t as hard as I feared.
When you realize this, you see that this tiny veil of fear is just resistance holding you back from a lot of things you want to do.
Overcoming this helps you live a more meaningful life but I’m not here to yell: “Just go for it.”
The reality is that you have to overcome this fear through exposure. However, your level of exposure matters can make or break you.
Determine your minimum exposure area: Drop and give me 50!
“I tried, but it didn’t work. I mean I emailed two people and no one responded.”
I’ve heard a version of that quite often.
Most people don’t try enough.
Here’s what I’m learning in the practice ground: you have to determine a minimum exposure area that will actually give you data you can adjust to.
Here’s how to climb up the exposure therapy ladder.
Start small, but large enough to get some data.
For instance, when I got a response from the GE guy, I sent about 72 emails out.
I got about 20 responses. That’s a 27% reply rate. (The good ol’ reply rate from 2017).
That established my baseline.
However there is a chance that if I went even small with 7 emails, I could have gotten 2 responses.
But perhaps if I only sent 5, I would have probably have received no response: 0%.
Start small to expose yourself to overcome the thing you fear.
However, there is a point when small exposure is too small that you don’t get the benefit of the learning. Even worse, that 0% can be so discouraging that you don’t try again.
So you want to go for a small enough exposure area that you are fine using it just as a test set (aka if you get burned doing it, you’ll be fine) but big enough that it can give you a statistically significant result to try again.
I’ll save you the math behind p-values and what is necessary to get something that’s statistically significant. The minimum number of data points is about 30.
My base line is 50.
Until you have done 50, you don’t have minimal viable data.
That might mean you send 5 emails/day over 10 days.
You’ll have to send 10 DMs/day over 5 days.
Perhaps 10 job apps/week over 5 weeks.
That’s my number.
Then I scale up from the feedback on that initial exposure area.
If you have not done up to your minimum exposure area, you cannot say it’s not working.
I’ve now scaled my exposure area to 300. That’s the number of reps I have to get in before I call it quits.
Ask yourself: “What’s the thing I keep telling myself I’d get to?”
“How is my fear of failure holding me back from starting and what’s the version of 50 reps I can do to reduce my fear?”
Determine your minimum exposure area and then choose to adjust along the way.
Final thoughts:
Fear of failure comes from focusing solely on the outcome.
The outcome is out of your control. The things you have control over is how you’re exposing yourself to your fears in amounts that give you enough feedback and momentum so you can adjust over time.
Yours truly,
Nifemi.
P.S. I’m working with a small crew of builders over the next three weeks to keep us on track to get clarity and build momentum for their brand and business in the new year.
There are still a few spots to join. If this is you, save your spot here before the deadline tonight.
