One half of sales are 90 % mental
Some long time baseball fans might remember the old New York Yankees player, Yogi Berra who was famous for his sayings that made no sense at all, yet they did, if you get what I mean. I know that I am taking some liberties with this famous Yogi-ism as his speech talked about ½ of baseball being 90 % mental…something like that but I like it so this is what I am going with today.
The fact of the matter is that your mental attitude plays a major role in determining your success or lack thereof. I do not think there is any denying this fact!
Over the past year and a half many of us have been pushed to the brink. Many people have been on the edge, literally with respect to staying in this business or not. Obviously this has been a major concern for all of us in the home office when we consider the plight of our salesperson in the field.
Although no one has been immune from these pressures, top producers have had to tough it out, in a sense because their options were limited. Jobs that pay $75 K to $100 K or more are not growing on trees in a regular economy, and certainly are not floating out there these past few years.
The salespeople in the middle to lower end of the pack are the ones that are faced with the toughest decisions. They have been making a living, but not a great one and now the tough times come at us.
This is when that mental toughness comes into play! Sure they can cash it all in and give up but the most resilient people know that there are brighter days ahead. There are! Things always come around. The question is will you be there to get a piece of the action when the time is right! Although it appears that everything has changed in this industry some of the basics remain the same from when I entered many years ago. You need to work hard. You need to work smart, perhaps smarter than you worked in the past.
You cannot be easily swayed by buyers saying no we are not buying! They have always said no more than they said yes…right? Think about it. They have always said no a heck of a lot more than they ever said yes! If this was not the case we would all be living in a better neighborhood, in a bigger house and driving a nicer car. The human memory is a very interesting thing. Sometimes it plays tricks on you only allowing you to remember the bad things.
Salespeople need to fight off the bad things. Sometimes this is done, not by denying that bad things happen but by offsetting them with the good memories or the good outcomes that have occurred in the past. Let me throw out another saying that I really like that when you think of it makes a lot of sense…
“The definition of insanity is when you do the same things over and over again yet you expect a different outcome each time.”
Has anyone ever done this? Time and time again we encourage you to try different things. Hopefully most of you have gotten this message by now! The worse that you will find is that the new effort did not produce any positive results either and then (looking on the positive side) you at least learned something!
Last but not least keep your head up. Buyers want to buy from positive people. Moping on a sales call and telling your buyer how bad things are is a sure fire way of making sure that they do not give you an order today. Be upbeat and positive and it can be contagious.
Who do you like to associate with? Faced with a choice between hanging with a bunch of positive people committed to finding a way to improve things today and tomorrow or a group of people telling you how bad things are and how they got screwed out of an order some way what would you pick?
So while we may all agree that these observations are true, staying mentally tough may be easier said than done. It takes discipline on a daily basis. It also involves some self regulation in addition to checking in with others who will tell you when your attitude stinks. These helpers need to be brutally honest with you! Do you have people like this in your lives? Are they around you enough to be able to keep you on track? This is a must!
If you answered yes that you have these types of people around you, but you only see or talk to them once per month this is not going to cut it! Having a bad or negative attitude for as much as a month without being corrected can do a lot of damage with prospects, customers and eventually your wallet or pocketbook because the sales and commission results will be affected adversely. So it is important to take an inventory of yourself. Here are a few questions to have posted in your office.
- Do I have people around who will tell me when my attitude is not positive?
- Do I wake up in the morning wanting to go to work?
- Do I have a plan of action for each day?
- Do my customers appear happy to see or hear from me?
- Do I spend more time complaining about problems than working to solve them and move forward?
- Do you feel that you MAKE THINGS HAPPEN or those things just happen TO YOU?
Please feel free to add your own questions. I bet you are thinking of some right now. It is essential that you maximize the amount of time that you are working with a positive attitude and eliminate (or certainly significantly reduce) the amount of time that you are working with a lousy attitude. Working on this every day will produce positive results for everyone!
Try it. If it does not work we will gladly refund your misery!
