You wake up knowing today is the day when you’re going to have one of those amazing sales calls.
Your sales motivation is up because this is the call you know can make or break your quarterly bonus, place you on the annual sales incentive trip and even secure your future in the company.
You’ve spent hours preparing for the call. You’ve developed what you believe is a killer presentation to which the customer will definitely say “yes.”
Everything is good until just after you wake up — and your mind begins to race about everything that could go wrong.
Without any prompting, those voices that hide in the back of your brain are suddenly front and center going full out trying to break your confidence.
As you continue to get ready to head out the door, the voices seem to be intent on doing one thing — break your confidence and destroy the sales motivation that was so high just moments earlier. To add insult to injury, the voices also encourage your stomach to join in on making you feel less than positive about the upcoming sales call.
If you’ve ever experienced feelings like this, don’t worry.
In fact, those feelings demonstrates you care and that is the first part of motivating yourself.
Tell yourself how if you didn’t care about the upcoming sales call, the voices would never have appeared. Even in my own sales career there are times I can hear the voices in my head starting to sound off. When they do, I remind myself it’s a good thing — because it means I care.
Key is to not give the voices any attention.
First step you can take to do this by simply writing on a piece of paper the 3-5 big outcomes you expect from the sales call you’re about to make. The outcomes are not only the ones the customer is going to gain from working with you, but also the ones you’re going to receive.
For you, such outcomes might be the satisfaction of closing the deal, the added commission money, or any number of other items. If you’re really prone to having voices attack you, carry this list with you starting several days before the sales call. Refer to it as often as needed as your reinforcement tool.
Second step to silence the voices is staying busy. Once you’re prepared for the call, move on to the next item on your list. Don’t sit there and review just for the sake of reviewing. I’ve found this only does one thing — open the door for the voices of doubt to enter your mind.
Third step is use a peer as a sounding board. Whenever you have a big sales call or something else of importance, always have a sales peer you can call who will help encourage you. I refer to this as “peer mentoring” and I encourage every salesperson no matter how experienced to have a “peer mentor.”
Finally, reach back and value your personal strength that comes from your experiences of success and your personal beliefs and faith.
I’ve talked about this before but one of the best ways to do this is to keep a journal where you record all of our sales successes.
Having a journal you can refer to as you’re preparing to head into a major call can help reinforce in your mind how you’ve had success before in these areas. When you combine this with your faith or belief system, it is amazing the results you can achieve.
Your sales motivation will be less likely to derail — especially when you need it the most.
Copyright 2011, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
