After a poor sales conversation do you get off tracking spending time and energy feeling sorry for yourself? You may not be consciously aware that you're doing it, but what do you do immediately after a sales call that doesn't work out? In essence, many salespeople call time out. I'm not discouraging you from taking a time out. In fact, I'm encouraging you to take a time out. But it's how you use that time out that will provide a real benefit for you.

During prime selling time it's not uncommon to find salespeople sitting in the local coffee shop reading the paper. A poor sales conversation can be really upsetting even demoralizing. You need time to regroup before you head to the next one, so you don't have a repeat of the previous experience.

While the experience is fresh in your mind it's the best time to actually learn from the experience, and make adaptations so you don't repeat it. In all likelihood you got a stall or objection, or you just didn't connect from the start and never had a conversation with the other person to begin with. If you're going to get value from this experience there are a couple things you need to do.

Identify the point where things started to go wrong. If you didn't connect from the onset, was it because: you didn't do your homework before making the appointment, you didn't adapt your communication style to one that was more comfortable to the prospect, or did you try to sell the prospect and manipulate them to do what you wanted them to do not what was best for them? Did you fail to listen to what the prospect was saying causing the prospect to feel disrespected?

When you get a stall or objection and your solution is a good match it happens because you didn't help the prospect to discover the value in your solution. Either you don't understand the buying process, or you just need more practice to develop the skills needed to help the buyer through this thought process. In the meantime all is not lost.

List all the stalls and objections you know you'll get or could get. Here are some common general objections:

I can't pay for this This sounds too hard I need to take care of this first Call me back in six months I need to look around.

Add to your list until you've thought of as many as you can. Start thinking of examples and stories of other people in similar situations who thought these things too. Use those stories to make your point to remove the objection.

Stories are engaging and non-threatening. They help the prospect to think about things from another perspective. Stories make things easier to understand and they strengthen your connection with the prospect. You'll find that as you work through this thought process you'll start to regain your confidence because you'll begin to identify ways to adapt your behavior in future appointments. You'll get fired up and ready for the next insurance sales conversation. And when you hold that next appointment you'll be much better prepared.