Written By: Jeb Blount
In the demanding, stressful, and emotional world of sales, the slightest inconvenience or bump in the road can turn your attitude toxic. Here’s how top performers maintain a winning mindset, handle disruptive emotions, and choose joy.
Your alarm clock didn’t work, it’s raining, you forgot your umbrella, the line at the drive-through was slow, you spilled coffee on your dress, and the clients you drove around for three days looking at houses couldn’t get financing.
You drove an hour across town to an appointment and your prospect didn’t show, your operations team screwed up the first delivery to your new customer, and you had to fight to get your commissions paid correctly— again!
Suddenly you are engulfed in the sea of doom, your cup is half empty, and there is no silver lining to your dark cloud. Disruptive emotions begin to drive your behavior.
Your outlook goes negative and your patience shortens. On the brink of outright hostility, and you find yourself unable to focus on selling. You just want to go home and crawl back into bed.
For a sales professional, a bad attitude and the disruptive emotions that come with it, if unchecked, can be fatal to your career.
In sales, attitude is the “X-Factor”. Attitude plays a powerful role in your success.
Because sales is inherently emotional for both you and your buyer and emotions are contagious; your attitude can and will impact your buyer’s desire to buy from you. This is why the salesperson’s attitude is often the winning edge in hard-fought battles for new accounts.
For this reason, you must protect your attitude at all costs.
Develop a bounce-back routine when things don’t go your way. Become aware of negative self-talk.
Let go of anger. Maximize positive input. No matter what happens to you or what outside influences are at play, your attitude is your choice. You are absolutely and completely in control of it.
It is easy to burn out in the sales profession. When you are tired and run down, it is difficult to maintain a positive attitude. Train like an athlete. Exercise your mind, body, and spirit. Then, when you do get knocked down, you’ll get up faster and you will win.
Learn to listen to your inner voice. It is there, talking to you all of the time. Most days, we only listen when it says negative things.
That’s when our attitude goes south. When you tune in to your inner thoughts you can get ahead of the curve and make repairs to your attitude before it begins to sink your sales career.
Stay away from negative inputs, negative people, and negative environments. Each morning say the words, “Today, I choose joy.” This one act will condition your mind, body, and spirit to work together to protect your attitude.
In sales and in life, attitude is the single greatest predictor of how far and fast you will climb. In other words, attitude = altitude. Make the choice today to use your attitude to climb straight to the top.
An important part of staying motivated is having someone in your corner who has your success in mind. Whether you are a sales professional looking to level up, a sales leader who needs help building a high-performing team, or a business owner seeking to accelerate revenue growth, we’ll customize a coaching plan and path just for you. Check out our coaching programs!
Jeb Blount
Jeb Blount is one of the most sought-after and transformative speakers in the world…
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