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Life is too short! If you are not having fun in what you do for a living, you are wasting part of your life. Work is something you don’t want to do. If you are making a living doing something you want to do, it should be called “fun” or “your favorite hobby.” Usually, a hobby is any activity that you constantly strive to improve upon because it is challenging and it holds your attention and therefore, creates pleasure. When you think of salesmanship as a “hobby,” it means you are enjoying learning new things about your profession. The whole reason I got into sales is that I believe it’s “fun.” That is a part of my attitude and it is my personal belief! So, let’s have some “fun” understanding ourselves and how and what creates a good attitude or lack of one!
First, what is a “good attitude” and how do we get one? Attitude is the “want to do” in a triangle of effective selling. Essentially, the triangle means that you can know “what to sell” (product knowledge), “how to sell” (strategies and tactics), but you have to “want to sell cheerfully and passionately” (a good attitude). As a result, an effective habit of selling is the intersecting of knowledge, skill and attitude. However, attitude is unquestionably the base of this effectiveness triangle because it is the desire and energy of everything else that occurs.
Psychologists define attitudes as a learned tendency to evaluate things in a certain way. Therefore, attitude controls behavior. Attitude has a huge impact on whether we achieve our sales goals as well as our sales momentum. Attitudes become manifest through your behavior. Present me with a person who has developed a poor attitude, and I will show you a person destined to climb no higher. Attitude creates the mood and motivation of all individuals. Clearly, attitude should not be under-estimated or trivialized. Did a bad attitude ever keep you from being productive?
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Different attitudes can be found in different people. Most of the people have high expectations but they just cannot bring themselves to achieve those expectations. These are the people with the ‘just get by’ attitude who put themselves into a passenger position. They want to be rich, they want the manager position and they want everything that is good yet there are no real motivation for actions to justify their “wants.”
Attitude of Successful People
Successful people are the people who are not satisfied with being mediocre. They have the “wants” and they will have an action plan and attitude to bring themselves towards it. They will climb over every obstacle that appears in their way and let nothing stop them.
Let us take a look at some key attributes of successful people.
- Ambitious
- Never give up easily when met with obstacles.
- Raising your level acceptance to match your level of expectation.
- Love taking actions.
So how do you have an attitude that brings you to success? Luckily, attitude can be changed. You just need to put in a little more energy into attaining what you want. If you want to be traveling around the world, become rich, live in a big house or a fancy car, just go get it! You will be asking, “so how do I get what I want?” First, …
Get into the driver seat. Do people always tell what to do and you are always listening to others for your directions in life. If you continue to stay in the passenger seat, the palce you are going to be is where the driver is going. Do you think you can get to where you want if the driver isn’t you? Take charge of your life now and get into the driver seat.
A goal is a must. Many times, people set goals and do not achieve them because their goals are not a must. Many people choose to diet, and they are motivated for only the first week but in the end they just gave up. What if someone is pointing a gun at you and tell you to lose 10 lbs. in 16 weeks or they will shoot you on the spot. I believe that anyone can lose that 10lbs or more in that time when it is a MUST for you to lose weight. (For example, a high school reunion.) We may have all the necessary resources to be successful, but what we need is to have a compelling reason to achieve it.
Raising your level acceptance to match your level of expectation. You can expect a luxurious life but if your level of acceptance isn’t matching your level of expectation, you can’t get what you want. Let me state an example. If you want to earn $10,000 bucks per month, but you are comfortable with $2000 per month. Do you think you can achieve your goal?
If you want to earn $5,000 per month (expectation level), but you are comfortable with $2000 per month (acceptance level), you tend to linger around your acceptance level because you are comfortable with it. It is only when you bring your level of acceptance up to the level of expectation, that you will achieve your goal.
In reality, a great attitude is simply a by-product of belief, and belief is just another word for faith and how you think. Attitude is really about your expectations; it is what you have chosen to believe. So a good attitude does not necessarily stem from what you say, but how you feel and what you believe will happen. Your outlook may simply depend as much as anything on the way you “roll out of bed.” Clearly, your positive attitude could make you a very powerful and successful salesperson. Let’s look at the facts.
Realistically, all human behavior is belief driven at some level. We have to believe that by doing something, it is going to give us a certain amount of pain, pleasure, joy, commitment or growth. There is some pay off or lack of it! There is something that we are trying to avoid or something we are trying to gain in our lives. Beliefs are an integral part of whom and what we are and what we will achieve. Your chosen beliefs create the fact and your reality. Beliefs will either move you forward and empower you or hold you back. “Human beings, by changing the attitudes of their minds, can change their outer aspects of their lives” – William James.
Have you ever felt as if you are “on a roll?” Sometimes you “can’t miss” and your attitude conveys it. Other times it seems like “you can’t win for losing” and naturally your attitude and disposition reflects a negative reaction. In view of that, doesn’t your positive character come from success and your negative attitude come from constant defeat?
As an example, can you remember the last time that you sold your first three customers during the day? The fourth customer who enters your store does not seemingly have a chance to getaway. The reason: your confidence is “sky high.” Comparatively, if you had lost the first three customers, your confidence would be jaded, unless you had received attitude training. So in part, success breeds a good attitude and failure breeds a poor attitude.
Hence, short of an elixir, the question is how does one accomplish a positive selling attitude internally on a consistent basis? How do you beat the “head trips” in the thick of adversity? When constant “defeats” and “letdowns” seem everywhere, how do you change the way you are feeling? How do we pull ourselves out of an uncomfortable sales slump?
A successful attitude starts with a state of mind. Marcus Aurelius said it, “Our life is what our thoughts make of it.” What you believe, you act on. Action begins with, and is instigated by belief.
You may ask why this is so? The formula for this is quite simple.
You cannot act on something that you do not at some level believe in, and any action you take results in some consequence. What you manifest creates your reality and becomes your personal paradigm. The only variable in this process is the strength and duration of your belief. If you see the sale and the circumstances as impossible, it becomes impossible—too you! In other words, the way we see the problem may be the problem.
Often, this is quite difficult for most people to comprehend, and even more difficult to implement. We have a tendency to repeat old mistakes and resist change, although we know deep down inside that change is inevitable. Nothing stays the same forever. There is an old saying that defines insanity as the expectation that acting in the same way will produce different results.
