Change Your Negative Attitude

Every sales career has its highs and its lows. It’s easy to feel great when you’ve just scored a big deal. But when the lows have the edge, it’s time for you to ramp up your positive thinking and stay focused on what’s right with your world. But how?
Basically you have two choices. 1. Collapse into a whimpering puddle of self-pity. 2. Stay confident, focused, and full of hope that things will turn around soon. Which will it be?

According to peak-performance experts and psychologists, you can stay confident, focused, and upbeat no matter what. And the really good news is, you can achieve that without ignoring your real feelings or neglecting what might need improving.

One starting point in a campaign for keeping pumped up is to watch the company you keep. This advice comes from Dr. Eve Wood, author of 10 Steps to Take Charge of Your Emotional Life (Hay House, 2006) and an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona Program of Integrative Medicine. Every sales team has a grumblers’ table, where nay-sayers gather to share stories of failure. You know the table we mean; never sit there. Never. The problem with sitting there is that negativity multiplies and, pretty soon, failure and rejection seem normal. Begin to believe that and of course there is no exit to a rosier future.

Right there is the start of a big problem – or a possible solution. Paradoxically, the advice at this stage is to seek out companionship…but choose people who can help get you back on track. Often, as rejections multiply, a sales rep goes into denial and stays mum about what’s occurring. But, says Angela Bakker Lee, a consultant with ZS Associates, a sales and marketing consultancy, a step toward maintaining nonstop optimism is to break the taboo of silence, to talk with others about what’s going wrong, but to do this with a focus on turning things around.

Change is a Challenge

Lee adds that an early question to ask when a rep begins to stumble is, “Has anything changed?” It could be that the marketplace dynamics have altered – maybe there’s new competition, for instance. When you hit a downturn, a way to start the healing is by ascertaining that, in fact, outside forces need to be addressed. Or, if they don’t, then what a rep needs to do is turn inward in search of internal optimism.

Toward that end, Alan Huang, a business coach with Action Coach in northern California, proposes a three-legged “holistic” cure.

The first step is what he calls the social aspect. Don’t be a lone wolf. Don’t believe that stoic silence is the only path to success, says Huang. He advises that reps talk with other reps who are prospering and listen to their secrets. Most will gladly share what they have learned about closing sales. Bottom line: Don’t become victimized by staying silent.

The technical aspect is Huang’s second step. “Develop a data-driven view of the enterprise so that temporary setbacks can be viewed in context,” says Huang. Case in point: On average, how many customer contacts are involved in reaching a sale? Know that 13 calls typically have to be made before the 14th results in a sale. Each of the unsuccessful calls can be viewed not as a rejection, but as a step toward the goal. In this same vein, dig deep into marketplace dynamics and trends that impact what you are selling – and do this with an eye on unearthing information that will help you sell more by understanding the marketplace better.

The psychological aspect is Huang’s third step. “We can control undesirable mental states,” Huang says – which is another way of saying that when negative thoughts pop up, we already know how to extinguish them. And being successful in selling necessitates recognizing and doing this. Every day. A powerful way to stay permanently upbeat, suggests Huang, is to know the tools that let us control our minds and our emotions. This is a task that ought to come easily to many sales reps because most of them are upbeat by nature.

Huang stresses that the rep who wants to stay on an empowerment path needs to pursue all three steps simultaneously. “That’s what produces the greatest results,” he says. Don’t think that one path alone will effect a cure of the blues and don’t just dig into the path that seems easiest or most enjoyable. Pursuing all three, in sync, is what will provide a lasting platform for prolonged optimism, says Huang.

Getting Psyched Up

Stuck on the third leg – priming the psychology to stay upbeat? That’s understandable, particularly in a period when the rejections just keep coming and optimism seems as rare as rain in the Sonoran desert. But the mounting scientific evidence is emphatic: We can create our own positive attitude. That is firm advice from Wood, who recommends using self-improvement tools that, increasingly, have been seen to work. She suggests, for instance, that a sales rep use affirmations – such as, “I am enthusiastically selling my company’s product line” – to reprogram the brain, neuron by neuron, to banish negativity and implement positive thinking. Don’t dismiss affirmations as only so many words. Affirmations – which include “I” and an action verb and a goal – are emerging as cornerstones of success. Besides, no harm could possibly come from periodically throughout the day closing one’s eyes and silently repeating, “I am closing all the sales I need to.”

Another tool Wood recommends is visualization, where we vividly and clearly see ourselves achieving the goals we dream about. Scientific evidence mounts, she stresses, that this visualization – which might seem like pointless daydreaming – in fact helps prepare the brain for success. The key is to make visualizations detailed and vivid. Really see yourself talking to that stubborn prospect – and closing the sale. See every step in the process and, then, when you are actually doing it, success comes that much more easily.

A third technique, extremely useful in dealing with periods of high stress, is to learn how to meditate, which is as simple as emptying the mind of thoughts and staying still, for perhaps 10 minutes. It sounds easy but it in fact is very hard to master – and those who try it say they are calmer, more centered, and better able to deal with negativity that arises in the course of the day. Meditation may be particularly effective in recovering from a series of rejections. Just put the phone down, close your eyes, and think about…nothing.
When the 10 minutes are over, somehow we feel refreshed, energized, ready for more.

Keep doing those three things – affirmations, visualization, meditation – and, eventually, the brain is reprogrammed to accept continuing success and to always stay optimistic – even when times are sour.

Love Sells

Kick all these steps you are taking up another, big notch by falling in love again with what you are selling. It’s frankly hard to stay pumped up selling a product one is indifferent about – particularly as rejections loom. But love the product – truly believe it is precisely the right answer to customer needs – and it is much easier to slough off rejections and charge forward. That is why Angela Bakker Lee recommends that, when a rep is stuck, sometimes a good way to recharge their personal batteries is to reconnect with customers and hear from them how terrific your product or service is.

Now drill in deeper still by recognizing that rejection, when it comes, needn’t be seen as permanent. It may in fact just be a step on the way to a sale. Business consultant Suzanne Bates, author of How to Speak Like a CEO (McGraw-Hill, 2005), says, “Only you have the power to decide how you will think about rejection. Accept the fact that everyone you are in contact with brings you closer to someone who really wants what you are selling.

And know that if you handle rejection with grace and even compassion for the other person, who is just trying to find the right solution, you may find they will call you again later, perhaps months or years from now.” Bates adds that there are clients in her portfolio who brushed her off. Then, after two years had elapsed, there they were, ready to do business. “Don’t see every rejection as final,” she says. “Some are just steps on the way to the sale.”

Keep working on improving your psychology. Here is the enticing upshot, says Lee: “The top sales executives are the ones who genuinely believe it is only a matter of time before things turn around – and this becomes, for them, a self-fulfilling prophecy. For them, it always does turn around.”