Dealing with sales anxiety can be difficult, no matter how experienced you are at your sales roll.

Dry pipeline and how to get over cold calling anxiety are the main causes for being stressed for not meeting your sales targets.

This post covers 3 issues that every sales person sooner or later has to deal with and how to get over different types of sales anxieties.

Acquiring a new client is much like going on the first date. And what describes first date the best? Those could be 3 words – ‘’YOU NEVER KNOW”.

The truth is that there will always be some obscurity regarding how well we will consort with the other person.

In both romantic and seller-client relationships, much of it depends on the first impression.

From there, you build trust and credibility, and try to make interaction as smooth and possible. Keep the other party interested in what you have to say, and you’re on your way towards profit.

Online marketers can learn a lot from psychologists and coaches in terms of what builds trust; and what, on the other hand, causes sales anxiety attacks that make people (in your case – potential clients) flee in terror.

Eliminating elements that cause sales anxiety and learning how to get over cold calling anxiety will considerably reduce the amount of prospects dropping off before you’ve even to finished your first sentence.

Let’s have a look at common sales anxiety causes in the sales funnel, and how to get rid of them.

1. Privacy and trust Anxiety

The Problem

It’s possible you haven’t given it much thought, but many people are still extremely concerned about their private data online. Ranging from giving you their e-mail address to providing full shipping details, people are reserved about sharing too much information online.

And to be honest – there is not much to blame. Privacy scandals that overwhelm society pretty frequently can give a ‘hard time’ for fair and honest online marketers.

The Solution
Fortunately, there is a solution to all of the problems, including this one, and this time it is disguised behind two simple words – SPLIT TESTS.

Different people have different thresholds for privacy anxiety.

The actual moment the anxiety attack strikes depends on the particular audience, as well as website and sales funnel structure. In order to pinpoint your weak spots, it’s worth setting up split tests for each data submission query. And see whether adding more credibility proof (which might be within the form of disclaimers, warranties, or ,for example, testimonials ) increases conversions.

However, that would be wise to always keep in mind, that too extensive and bold appearance of “please trust me”, can make the opposite effect and give a misleading signal that something just not be ‘quite right’. There’s a fine line between establishing trust and coming off as if you have something to hide. Imagine an electronics sales agent grinning and saying “you can trust, me really, don’t worry, it will all be alright.”

2. Usability Anxiety

The Problem

Although the sales funnel in your head may appear perfect, click by click taking the customer forward, it may not seem that simple for the customer itself. If at any point in your sales funnel the prospect finds themselves thinking “what the hell am I supposed to do NOW?”, an anxiety attack is usually inbound.

The Solution

Use heat maps and track user behavior to figure out what they’re expecting, and how they’re trying to interact with your website. There are plenty of guides out there to tell you how to ensure proper website usability. Again, perform split tests to see which whether you’re giving your prospects everything they need to move further down the sales funnel. In addition, utilizing exit intent technology can easily help you stop website visitors from bailing out, by providing a clear and simple incentive to take a step further.

3. Effort Anxiety

The Problem

Have you ever felt like doing something just takes too much effort, so the thought “maybe I’ll just leave it for later!” occurs?

So far so good, except for the fact that ‘later’ hardly ever comes.

The classic college student procrastination loop has its parallels in online marketing. When it’s just too much of a hassle to get to the next step of your sales funnel, prospects will often choose to leave it for later. And that’s probably never. Long fill-in forms, too much copy to read or sluggish sales funnel progression can all result in your leads deciding that they just don’t have enough time to do what you have been asking them to do ‘right on the spot’.

The Solution

Depending on the nature of your offer, different level of involvement may be asked from the prospect.

One method of tweaking your sales funnel to reduce user effort anxiety would be to put down the list of things you absolutely have to tell your customer, and things your customer needs to tell you before you can seal the deal. From there, evaluate how much of it you’re trying to push through at once. With some testing, you’ll be able to balance out your sales funnel so that none of the parts of it feel like too much of a hassle to your potential client.

Now is your turn to deal with Sales Anxiety!

Sales anxiety isn’t just a fiction met in psychology books it’s a part of our everyday sales rep’s life whether we are aware of it or not.

However, the levels of it scaled from “just a little bit of it” to “OMG, I can’t stand this!” can make a HUGE difference in our feelings.

Your potential customers are affected by their subconscious, which makes an easy correlation that the subconscious feelings of YOUR customers create your PROFITS.

By eliminating elements in your sales funnel that cause anxiety, you’re minimizing the percentage of people who panic and bail. This way, you’re getting more prospects through the whole funnel, and, as we know, more opportunities to sell most often results in more sales.

So let’s keep our clients’ subconscious healthy and our incomes high!