Why Successful Sales People Need To Unleash The Power Of Positive Thinking

by: Tony Dimech



We all know that when you're bursting with confidence and enthusiasm you've a far greater chance of making that sale.

It's all about attitude. If you're in the wrong frame of mind when you start talking to your potential customer then you won't sell a bean. After all, if you don't sound passionate about your product or service then why on earth should your customer bother to give you an order?

In my view it's absolutely crucial to give off the right vibes, and it's vital that you make the best impression and come across as a person with whom the customer wants to do business.

If you appear to have a negative attitude or be in a bad mood, then I am convinced that this can actually be quite scary for your customer. Their reaction to you will be poor, and your chances of making a sale are zero.

You should take the instinct further and develop a conscious mood meter to judge exactly how you feel before you meet a customer. You need to ask yourself how you feel on a scale of one to 10. If you can't be bothered getting out of bed, then you're scoring low at 1, and if you feel that nothing can stop you, then you've reached the zenith zone of 10.

So ideally you need to get to a 10 frame of mind every time you go out to make a sale? Well, surprisingly no. This is not the best place to be as you could come across as hyperactive, edgy or just downright annoying.

I actually believe that 8.5 to 9 are the perfect mood scores for successful sales people, and it is this level you need to achieve for maximum clinch-the-deal effectiveness.

If you judge yourself as being a 5-8.5 then don't go out to sell unless you can boost yourself higher. If you're rating lower than 4 then you have a serious problem and need to work much harder at getting to the right level.

So what do you do when it's 9am on a Monday morning, you've had a row with your partner, your head aches and it's raining? You've got a meeting booked for 10am with a potential client 20 minutes drive away, and you really can't be bothered. You would far rather cancel the meeting, stay in your nice dry office with a cup of coffee and read the paper.

It may be tempting to give into this feeling, but of course it really isn't the solution. You will feel a million times better if you can overcome your mood, perform well and win a new order.

You may be surprised to know that the average person has around 200 mood swings every day. It's just not that difficult to switch from mood to mood, and we can all shift from joy to fear to depression within seconds. But it's no good waiting for your mood to shift; it's up to you to put in some control mechanisms to get yourself into the right frame of mind.

There's one very simple way of increasing your positive feelings, and that is to smile. Look in a mirror, put a huge grin on your face and watch the difference. Go a step further, and start smiling at people - you'll see that just about everyone starts smiling back. It's contagious, happiness really does spread.

Next you need to actively conjure up images in your mind about what makes you feel happy, positive and content. It might be thinking about your children or pet iguana, or perhaps remembering a time when you were relaxing on a warm beach with waves lapping gently in the background. Try to remember a time when you were perfectly happy and think about how you felt at that moment. Just doing this can shift your mood up a gear.

There is another very easy way to lift a mood, and that is to listen to favourite upbeat music. Get lost into it for a few minutes, tap your toes and maybe even sing along. I guarantee you'll feel better.

Changing mood is really all about being able to adopt the right attitude. We all have bad sales calls from time to time, and find ourselves up against difficult, awkward and unresponsive customers. If this happens to you, don't dwell on it and sink into despondency. Instead just forget about it, move on and start all over again.

However gloomy the situation you are in appears to be, make a conscious decision to look for the positive side. For instance, you might be stuck on the M25 for two hours on your way to see a customer. Change your headset from frustration and annoyance, and instead tell yourself how lucky you are to be able to spend two solid hours on your own listening to your favourite music turned up loud.

I would also recommend that you stay clear of negative colleagues. We all know that sales people within a team tend to talk each other down. They might do this by moaning about the price of a new product or complaining about how their boss has treated them unfairly. Once these sort of conversations start they spiral into further negativity until everyone feels downright depressed. Successful people get detached from those groups and away from anyone who has the ability to make them feel negative or downhearted.

I also have a simple but amazingly effective method to make my frame of mind more positive. I have a photo album that captures moments in time that I have enjoyed. I keep mementos of all my best times which might be a theatre ticket, photo of me looking terror struck on a theme park ride, a programme from a match my team won or a particularly nice letter of thanks from a customer. On the last Sunday of the month I look through the collection and decide what to put into my special mood-enhancing album. If I am having a tough time all I need to do is start looking through the album, relive those good moments and I will be at mood level nine in an instant. This is a trick I have been using for years and it always works for me. It's brilliant.

It really is very easy to harness the powers within yourself to change your mood. In turn this improves your attitude and reaps huge benefits in terms of your personal success at selling. It works, so try it!
 

About The Author

Tony Dimech has spent all of his professional life in sales; he worked for 20 years various in positions for two international manufacturing companies. In 1998 he started Appleton Associates Ltd http://www.Appleton-Associates.co.uk  one of the UK's leading sales training companies. Tony travels extensively throughout the world working with sales professionals to develop new ideas.