Last week I discussed the scripts that are input into our minds when we are young, and that we fail to re-evaluate the usefulness of as adults. Those scrips can also be referred to as ‘traditions” and can often be created by yourself.
How many traditions do you have that are destructive to your mind and your sales efforts?
What do I mean?
Well, for example, if you drive to work every day in rush hour, take
the same traffic congested route, get angry about it and yell at the
other drivers then you have accidentally created a tradition of starting
your morning off angry and frustrated. Not a great way to start the sales day, right?
Do it long enough, and your mind will create an anchor on it, so that just getting into your car triggers feelings of anger and frustration. That classic Pavlovian response exists in everyone, and is simply caused by repetition of intense emotion around two unrelated events that your mind proceeds to link together. Once the link is established, your mind defers to it, just like the tires on your car when they find a rut in the road.
Advertising agencies use this concept every day. They take some popular, positive energy infused song and play it while showing you videos of Hondas for 30 seconds. Repeat that a couple hundred times a week, and in doing so, one transfers or links the positive emotion of that song to Hondas. The next time you see a Honda, you have a positive reaction. Soda companies, Beer companies, Restaurant chains and other businesses spend millions of dollars doing this for one reason…IT WORKS.
If you start by looking at a list of the prospects who turned you down and say to yourself, “I hate cold calling” over and over then you are creating a tradition of starting your day with negative emotion, while staring at your desk and computer. Guess what? After a little while of doing this, your mind will start to link negative emotions with your desk and your computer. Which means EVERY time you sit down at your desk, your brain will take you to a negative place by default. Won’t that be fun? Before you know it, you sit down at your desk to get to work and feel defeated and frustrated. You start every day trying to dig yourself out of an emotional hole.
Here’s the good news. You can work that effect to your advantage. You can link up things in a way that helps you. YOU have control to create your own traditions and patterns.
- What if you start every morning taking five minutes to read 3-5 emails from customer who love you and wrote you to let you know?
- What if you start every day by reading some motivational or sales coaching tips that you can use today, while making calls and presentations?
- What if you end every work day by organizing your lead list and identifying your top targets so that you can start the next day knowing exactly where your daily activity is going to come from?
- What if you start every day by reminding yourself the top 5 reasons you love being in sales, or the top 5 reasons you love the product that you sell?
For most of us, over 80% of self talk is negative. We ask ourselves questions like “Why is business slow?” or “Why can’t I get people to take a meeting?”. Controlling the questions we ask is the easiest way to start establishing new ruts in your road, ruts that will help, not hinder your sales efforts.
“Who did business with me recently, that I can call and thank?”
“What am I most proud of in my sales efforts?”
“Who is my happiest customer, and why?”
“Who on my sales team is doing something good that I can start doing as well?”
Those are better questions to ask, and they push your mind to focus on things that empower you.
Before you go to bed, spend 20 minutes tonight, and identify the top 5 negative traditions/routines you want to eliminate from your life. Then decide on 5 new traditions, deliberate, helpful traditions you can replace the bad ones with to improve your world.
You won’t change it overnight. It took a lot of repetition to create the ruts in your road, and it will take repetition to change them. Once you start doing this, however, you will be stunned at how much control you can impact on your mind set, and the impact that has on your results.