Based upon your answer, you could be setting yourself up for future success or future downturns.
I know the above statement sounds very absolute – like an either – or situation. True is it is fairly close to an absolute issue based upon both experience and some high performance research.
Now, before I get too far into this b2b sales tip and my comment box gets full of objections, I will say I have found some exceptions. The key word here is “exceptions” rather than a norm.
The key point here is optimistic b2b sales people usually are more successful in the long term than their evil twin the pessimistic b2b sales person. Now, I use the term “twin” for a specific reason. When a b2b sales team have all been trained in the new b2b sales model and have equal quality accounts to call upon, then they are twins relative to the opportunities presented.
However, the truth is the optimistic group usually out performs the pessimistic group over the long term. Why? Because they miss more opportunities due to things like destructive self-talk, slip of the tongue events with buyers, and a lack of positive energy to demonstrate and energize the buyer.
I realize this a tough one for some people to handle, yet, did you ever hear about the Law of Attraction and the Law of Vibration? While these factors are more aligned with the subconscious and the even harder to understand “super conscious” – the fact is the do help or hinder an individual.
Napoleon Hill was the first person to find out how the high performers in life were using this information to maximize their potential and opportunities. His “Think and Grow Rich” is still one of the most read books on high performance in the world – even through it was written based upon his research during the Great Depression and the next decade of slow growth in business. Yet, the high performers were turning in huge results and fortunes during this time, which is similar to our current economic environment.
Additional research during the years has consistently shown an optimist with a positive attitude beats the performance of the pessimist with the negative attitude. Very seldom will you find a negative person at the top of high performers list. In fact, I have seen extremely talented people with negative attitudes, fall flat on their face relative to performance.
The main reason for this difference in performance is the optimistic b2b sales person is always thinking about how to move forward – and spends little time thinking about past results. They see opportunities – which are positive – rather than seeing problems – which are negative and must be overcome just to get back to ground zero.
The key here is to take a moment and reflect upon your self talk over the past hour. What percentage of the language was positive, upbeat, opportunity focused with a can do attitude versus the language of the negative, down trodden, “here it comes again”, another loss coming my way, someone is going to screw me out of this deal, can’t get anything done attitude.
If the negative is out performing the positive, well, have you ever heard of the Self Fulfilling Prophecy? This is where your subconscious mind kicks in to make all your self talk come true. The subconscious mind does little filtering of right or wrong – it just takes action upon what it feels is a command. Yikes, if you feeding your mind with negative thoughts.
Attitude is both a choice and a habit. Make the choice to be in the world of the positive and resist the world of the negative. Make it a habit and you will operate on autopilot regarding your attitude. Then watch your results improve (I am assuming your efforts will either remain the same or even interest due to the new desire for success.) as you begin to recognize more opportunities to win b2b sales accounts.
Think Positive Always!
Voss Graham
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