Are you tough enough to be in sales? Are your people? Mental toughness and sales go together. If you want to be a good salesperson, mental toughness is essential. Why? Well, it might be obvious but let’s review:
You face rejection
You need to ask for the order
You need to ask difficult questions
You need to stay away from discounting
You have to sell at higher prices
You might have to call strangers for business
You might have to challenge a prospect when they are not accurate
You are alone and potentially isolated much of the time
Prospects and customers need to respect you
Although it’s a topic that many do not want to discuss or don’t think they need to address it, we see more salespeople fail, leave the profession, or not reach their potential because of this single fault. They aren’t mentally tough during tough times. It’s not a small problem. When the typical salesperson gets into a funk where they aren’t selling or not selling enough, they start to feel the pressure and fail again. They might feel the pressure and say something they shouldn’t or give concessions to try to secure an order or even give up. It’s not pretty and it can be addressed. Oftentimes, it requires months or years to remedy.
Look at the #1 tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic. His ability to overcome adversity during tournaments is astounding. He can be behind, playing poorly or even upset at the umpires that day and he still manages to overcome adversity and win (he did just have a single meltdown during a tournament, but he has surely already recovered). Think of how most people react when faced with failure. The internal negative self-talk begins, they start missing more, which feeds back into more negative self-talk and they begin to spiral downward. A salesperson, when failing, may allow self-doubt to creep in, flogging themselves with phrases that make it impossible to recover. “I suck!” they say, and they don’t recover from a loss. “Every time someone says my price is high I lose” they say, and they lose that sale too or even start blaming the company for high prices. “I’m never going to get this one. It’s too big and I never close the big ones” they say, and of course they don't close this one either as it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That is not to say that it is as simple as telling ourselves, “it’s ok, I got this”. Although that may work for some, most need additional strategies of which to rely on to help them recover. I’d like to offer a handful of strategies here that can help you recover when you feel the negative self-talk creeping in:
Realize that most of what we say in our head about ourselves is not true. You can start to treat the negative thoughts like a gremlin that you don’t need to speak with. I.e., “I’m sorry, I don’t need you right now”. It’s an acknowledgement of its presence but a denial into your thoughts. It has been said that Djokovic tells himself that no matter what happens on the court, he makes a deal with himself to not listen to the negative self-talk. He ignores it. It can be quite effective.
Learn to recover sooner. Look, we can all be affected by bad news. However, give yourself permission to suffer for less time. If something ruins your weekend, make a deal with yourself to only let it bother you for a day. When you’ve mastered this, lessen it to a half a day. Then, a few hours, then an hour, a few minutes until finally you have learned not to allow yourself to suffer but a few minutes when you fail or something negative happens to you.
Don’t allow anything that happens to you affect how you feel about yourself. When you were born you were a perfect mental creation. Unfortunately, we were taught through our experiences to feel bad about ourselves when we perform poorly. Get a bad grade in school, you feel bad about yourself. Strike out at the plate, you feel bad about yourself. Forget a line in the play, you feel bad about yourself. We literally have trained ourselves to tie our performance to how we feel about ourselves. Look at yourself as a messenger. We can’t control our prospects and customers. Bad things happen. It doesn't mean you’re a bad person. Don’t connect the two.
Don’t make it your goal to be liked. This need for approval can only hurt you in sales. Besides, there is not a strong correlation between being liked and winning sales. There is a correlation, however, with the ability to gain their respect and allow them to be comfortable with you. Make no mistake, I am not saying that they should hate you. I am saying that respect and comfort work better for sales success and that just because someone likes you does not guarantee sales success. We’ve all lost deals where we got along with the prospect.
Use “hot sauce” when you are trying to make sales. What is “hot sauce”? Hot sauce is phrases and approaches that help gain you respect from the prospect and customer. Hot sauce is saying what needs to be said, even if it hurts. In result, you often will get the truth and many times, the sale. As example, when someone asks for a discount you could say, “What happens if I look at everything and we can’t come down, what happens?” Or, “A discount? How am I supposed to respond to that?” Or, “Uh-oh. Sounds like we’re done here”. Depending on what you think is appropriate in your situation, “hot sauce” can cause the prospect to ‘give in’ and give you the order, at your price. Maybe more importantly, done on a regular basis you will become more mentally tough.
As a sidenote, it’s not only the “hot sauce” type of phrases that will help with your mentality. Use body language in the same manner. Stand with your hands in one of the power positions, like hands on your hips. Assume a wider stance. Straighten up your posture. Use really good eye contact. Don’t use words like, “just” when you speak. Your brain will know the difference between the mentally tough you and the mentally weak – even if you’re acting for now, your mind will pick up on your actions and feel tougher simply because of the way you are acting.
Being mentally tough can help you in all aspects of your life and truly only takes practice. It takes a regular routine of using the techniques or others when you feel inadequate. It requires replacing the negative self-talk with something else. It takes setting up a recovery system for yourself that you can rely on when you aren’t feeling mentally tough. I’ve seen people go from “Pee-Wee Herman to John Wayne” (youngsters, Google the references if needed) simply by mastering their mind using these techniques and others. Spend the time, practice and get yourself mentally tough. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s a skill that you will likely need to use for the rest of your life.