If you’ve been following our series on the 8 Ways to Increase Your Sales Motivation, I hope you have started to see the impact on your selling skills.

Just to recap, I’ve already elaborated on eliminating negative people from your life and celebrating your successes each day.  This brings us to the third way to increase your sales motivation.

3. Leverage your best customers.

Your best customers are your best customers because they value the service you provide them.  Use their confidence in you and your business to drive forward in your sales motivation and your selling skills.  If you’re struggling, pick up the phone and call your favorite customer. Merely talking to them will help pick you up.

Who loves you more than your customers?

Sales can be both the most exhilarating job and the most de-motivating job.  Anyone who has been in sales for any length of time has seen both extremes. Unfortunately, it goes with the territory.  The challenge is in finding ways to not let the negative situations overpower you for any longer than necessary.

The best way I’ve found to deal with your motivation after having walked out of a very negative situation is to pick up the phone and call a favorite customer.  Too many times, salespeople — after having to listen to a customer chew them out over something — will try to deal with it by wasting away the rest of the day.

Don’t tell me you haven’t done this. I’ve been a victim of this. I remember in my early days of selling a moment where a customer jumped on me about something. I spent the rest of the day driving aimlessly around my territory.   Your employer is not paying you to do this.

Your employer also isn’t paying you to call your spouse, mother or someone else in an attempt to cry on their shoulder and gain sympathy.  Sorry, that doesn’t cut it.  Calling someone to gain sympathy is not going to get you back selling fast enough.

When you get slammed by a customer, the first thing you should do is pick up the phone and call one of your favorite customers. Ask the customer how business is or what they’ve got going on.  Your favorite customer will be happy to hear from you and will share with you some positive information.

This is what you want to hear — what you’ve done right and how you’ve helped others.  When you hear this from a customer, it will help you feel better about the job you’re doing. It will get you back in the selling mode faster than anything else you can do.

One of the most beautiful things I’ve found about this approach is it does two things.  First it will help you, the salesperson, to get back to selling faster, and second, it allows you to make contact with a good customer.  For me, that’s a double win that not only improves your sales motivation, but also improves your customer relationships and selling skills as well.

Copyright 2011, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.