Find a Fix for Your Discomfort

Carol Costello, www.soulofselling.com

“The Discomfort Dilemma is that perilous moment when you stand poised between doing whatever is the next step in the selling process—or doing something to avoid it,” describes Carol Costello, author of The Soul of Selling. “That next step might be making a cold call, calling back the person you agreed to call last week, promising results, or anything that involves discomfort, the possibility of failure, or any potential for rejection.” According to Costello,

In the midst of the Discomfort Dilemma, almost anywhere seems better than where you are. And there are so many more comfortable things to do! You could call a friend. You need to keep up those relationships, after all. You could play with the cat. The poor thing needs exercise. You could e-mail your aunt, or even pay the bills. Hey, you could shampoo the rug!

Bills do need to be paid. Rugs need to be shampooed. But not during the time when you said you’d make calls.

For each of your own most likely Discomfort Dilemmas, you need to devise a fix that gets you moving past that paralyzing moment of indecision and takes you into action. One of my clients hated to make the first call of the day. Her fix was to spend a moment before she picked up the phone remembering a recent call that had been particularly pleasant. Another client’s Dilemma was that when things were going well and she was ahead of the game, she felt an irresistible desire to shop. She learned to say to herself, “Just do what you promised yourself. When you’ve done it, you can spend the whole rest of the month in the stores if you want.”

Be imaginative. One client got a tube of glitter glue, and saved it for Discomfort Dilemmas. When she completed the task she had been resisting, she ran a line of glue over it on her to do list. That may sound strange, but when it comes to the Discomfort Dilemma, you want whatever gets you through the night. That woman made more than $350,000 last year, and I, for one, don’t laugh at her glitter glue.