Step 14: Sales Success Mindset
Written by Dave Lorenzo on December 11, 2015 / 60 Second Sale
This is step 14 in the free sales course and it is titled: Sales Success Mindset.
Step Fourteen: Sales Success Mindset
We’re back in step 14. Now, this step is a little bit different. What we’re going to do is we’re going to cover 20 different mindset tips that I want you to refer back to the entire time you’re working through the 60 second sales process. There’s 20 different mindset tips, and anytime you feel yourself in a little bit of a slump and you need a boost, you come back to this step in the process, and you scroll through the different mindset tips, and get that little bounce back in your step. The little boost of energy, the little boost of encouragement. That’s what step 14 is all about. We’re going to go 1 by 1 through these 20 different mindset tips that will help you get back on track when you’re selling, get back on track with growing your business, and keep you focused from a mindset perspective.
Mindset tip number 1 is independence. I want you to think of yourself as financially independent at all times. This is true regardless of what the reality is. You don’t need any business ever. I want you to have the ability mentally to walk away from any opportunity at any time. If you can convince yourself that’s true, and if you can convince yourself of the truth, which is that you are the most powerful person in your life in terms of controlling your financial destiny because you can sell, then you have that level of independence. You have the ability to walk away at any time. When you’re sitting across the table from a perspective client, he or she will sense this. It gives you a boost of self-esteem. It’s like a shot of adrenaline, and you are able to walk away from any deal at any time, you’re able to control your own destiny. Independence is foundational, and it is 1 of the key elements of a successful mindset in your business. You don’t need any individual deal; you are the person who makes opportunity for yourself. You’re a strong independent individual.
Mindset number 2, lean into fear. Be intimidated by no one. When you’re successful with the 60 second sales system you will find that you’re meeting with people who are way above your pay grade. You’ll be meeting with people who run large companies, who run large divisions of companies, and you have to be able to lean into that fear. If you feel something is pulling you, you feel that little nagging sense of fear, like the roller coaster going up the hill, you know you’re on the right track and you have to run toward that fear. The minute you concur it, the minute you take it on and you defeat it, you know that will never ever hold you back again. You’ll see this surface when it comes to intimidation, you’ll see it surface when it comes to the value or the pricing that you’re going to introduce to your client.
You need to lean into it. That fear should never hold you back, it’s a sign that you’re pushing the boundaries of your own success. It’s a sign that you are on a path to becoming even more successful. The minute you fear something, you need to run toward, lean into the fear.
Mindset number 3, become guilt free. We all have people in our personal lives who want to thrust guilt upon us. They use guilt as a tool to manipulate us, to get us to do things we normally wouldn’t do. You need to reject that, that is not your baggage. In fact, throw that baggage off the train. Anytime someone tries to thrust guilt upon you, just look them square in the eye and say, “That’s not my issue. That’s your issue, here’s how I would like to proceed.” Clients will often do this to you when they feel like they’re in between a rock and a hard place. They do this when they’re negotiating the value of your service, when they’re negotiating what they will receive for what they want to pay. Do not ever compromise om your ability to produce a product or a service at a fair price because of guilt. Guilt is an emotion you cannot afford to have, whether you’re a business leader, a sales person, or both. Reject guilt at any opportunity in your personal and professional life because guilt will only hurt you, it never helps.
Mindset number 4, respect money. Never ever be ashamed, never ever be ashamed of the amount of money you make. You need to respect money because money makes things possible. Whoever said, “Money can’t buy you happiness,” is a person who never had any money. The true things in life that are important are generally not for sale, I will grant you that. Good health is generally not for sale, although you can keep yourself in good health if you can invest more time in taking care of your body, taking care of your mind. Money is important for quality of life. You need to respect it. You also need to have a health attitude toward the way you use your money, and the way you spend your money. Treat yourself shamelessly well.
If you don’t invest in yourself, no one else will. When you feel like it, take as much money out of your business as is possible, and spend money on yourself as often as possible. The reason that you work is to take care of yourself, and the people that you care about. You need to care about yourself first. Have a health respect for money, don’t be ashamed or embarrassed by it, and use it on yourself as often as you possibly can.
Mindset number 5, guard your time. People will come in and they will try to rob you of your time, just like they try and rob you of your finances, they try to rob you of your money, they’ll try and rob your house. People will try and steal your time from you. Use your time as productively as possible. For example, unless you are selling online advertising, the time you spend on social media should be kept to a minimum during your selling hours, during your work hours. It is very difficult to sell directly on social media. Spend your time, the valuable time that you have, your selling time, spend that actually selling.
Look at your time journal. You should keep a book of everything that you do over the course of a week. Periodically, 3 times a year, 4 times a year keep a journal of everything you do each day for a week 3 or 4 times a year. Then cut down all the time you spend doing things that are not productive. Invest your time wisely, guard your time, and don’t let people steal it from you. Your time is the most valuable commodity you possess. Don’t give it away, don’t waste it, invest it.
Mindset number 6, focus on outcomes. There is a famous expression that the hall of fame football coach Bill Parcells used to use all the time. He would say, “Don’t tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby.” You want to be focused on outcomes. Shortcuts are okay, as long as you’re taking steps that are legal, moral, and ethical, get to the outcome you desire as quickly as possible. Focus on the outcome, and if someone knows how to get down that path quickly, you should go to them, interview them, study at their feet, model their behavior. Your job is to get to the ultimate goal, to close the sell as quickly as possible. You don’t need to worry about whether or not you follow each of these steps to get there. If you can get there by only following 1 step, more power to you. Use that step over and over again until it doesn’t work. Focus on outcomes, and you will be amazed at how successful you are, and how quickly you get to the level of success you desire.
Mindset number 7, remove negativity. Negative people in your life will hold you back. Negative people in your personal life will hold you back in business, negative people in your business life will hold you back in your business life, and in your personal life. Get rid of them. You need to take an inventory every single year of the people who are in your life. Anybody who’s in your life that’s negative, that just sucks energy from you, you need to get rid of them. If they’re a member of your family you need to minimize the amount of time you spend with them. I will tell you that this is probably one of the most powerful things you can do. Immediately remove negative people from your life, and the quality of your life will improve. Surround yourself with successful, positive, optimistic people and you will become a successful, positive, optimistic person.
You are the sum of the 5 people you hangout with the most. I forget who said that, but nothing is truer than that. Surround yourself with positive, happy, optimistic people, and you will become a positive, happy, optimistic person. You’ll be magnetic, people will be drawn to you, they will be attracted to you because of this optimism.
Habit number 8, don’t rely on your memory. Take notes and keep track of your clients likes, your clients tendencies, and the behavior that your clients exhibit that could be helpful or harmful in your relationship. Don’t rely on your memory. Write down the names of your favorite clients, write down the names of their spouses, write down the names of their children, keep this in your database so that you know everything about the people who are most important to you in business. You need to keep track of the things that are important to the people who are important to you, because you need to reference those people, and the things in their life over and over again. This is part of having an external orientation. Never ever rely on your memory to accomplish this, take careful notes and store these notes in a place where you can review them before you meet with them each time.
This will also help you from making stupid mistakes, and slipping up, and talking about people with whom the person doesn’t get along. Keeping these notes and not relying on your memory is powerful. Make sure you make this a habit.
Habit number 9, get paid first. Get paid first, do not bill people and wait for the money to come in, always get paid up front. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “This is not my industry norm, my clients won’t do business with me that way.” My frame of reference for this is think about the times when you had money owed to you, and people didn’t pay you. Let’s say its 10% of the time. If 10% of your clients wouldn’t do business with you as a result, then you’ll break even without the heartache of chasing that money. Always start out a relationship by asking for full payment up front, and negotiate from there. In my world I don’t negotiate back down to any other payment terms other than, “You pay me, then we do the work.”
That’s the way it should be in your business. Wealthy people get paid first, people who are mediocre in terms of wealth or poor, wait for the money to come in. Wealthy people make use of other people’s money while they’re doing the work, poor people do the work, and then the creditors are hounding them, and they have to hound people to get paid. Get paid up front.
Habit number 10, follow your passion. If you are more passionate about 1 area of your work than another, then delve into that passion and see if you can make it the focus or the main point, what main focal point of your work. It will lead you down a path that is good because every day will be a pleasure for you. I speak with a lot of people who are in the twilight of their career, and they’re thinking about how they’re going to exit their business. I particularly do this in professional services firms. Insurance firms, in law firms, in CPA firms. The reason that they want to get out is because they’re sick of doing what they’ve done for the last 40 years, because they were never passionate about it.
If there’s an aspect of your business that you’re passionate about, see if you can make that the staple, the main stay of your business. In sales, if there’s a particular type of customer you like to call on, if there’s a particular type of customer with whom you like to work, if there’s a particular type of industry that you have a passion for, see if you can focus the most on that industry because it will feel like you’re never, ever going to work. You will be involved in an industry that energizes you, that fires you up, and that passion will come through. It will be contagious, your clients will love doing business with you.
Habit number 11, ignore your critics. Ignore unsolicited advice. This is a huge, huge habit to get into. Anybody who criticizes you most often you’ll find, has not walked a mile in your footsteps. When someone criticizes you ask yourself, if when they’re criticizing you if there’s anything constructive that can be found in that criticism. If it’s just an attack on you or your approach, then you know there’s nothing constructive there. You should focus on setting that aside, and thinking that it’s more about them, than it is about you.
You’ll find that most criticism is about the giver, rather than about you, the receiver. Only focus on criticism when it comes from someone who’s been where you’re going, and it’s constructive, and it’s foundational, and there’s something you can use from it to build on and to grow on. If it’s personal, or it’s aimed at you or your personality, disregard it, it’s about the person giving it and not about your receiving it.
Habit number 12, give back. You’ll find most often that when you give to charity, or when you give to someone who needs it, it comes back to you tenfold. The reason it does is because of what it says about you, and the way it makes you feel. Each of us, when we give to another person feels like we are a better person as a result. I encourage you to take 10% of your time, 10% of your skills, and if you can afford to, 10% of your income and invest it into a cause that will make your community better. It can be your local community; it can be any community to which you belong. Investing 10% of yourself in a community to help it grow, and become a better place benefits not just you, but everyone around you. That feeling comes through when you’re selling to people.
If you know at your core you’re a good person, and giving back helps you feel like you’re a good person, then you become bullet proof. People cannot attack you, or your character. Even if you don’t get this sell, if you don’t close this deal, you’ll close the next 1 down the road and it doesn’t effect who you are as a person.
Habit number 13, never be embarrassed to sell. Selling is helping. I meet with people all the time who feel like selling is beneath them. You should never feel that way. Selling is helping, selling is offering a service in exchange for value. The way we take, and the approach we take in the 60 second sales process will help you uncover the needs of your client. When you uncover his needs, and you meet those needs, you help him become better, you help his business improve, you help his business grow. Selling is helping. In fact it is malpractice for you not to offer help to someone who needs it when you know you can help. You are the surgeon, and the person is lying on the table bleeding. You have an obligation to help them. That’s what selling is, never ever be embarrassed by that, never apologize for it. If you can help someone its your obligation to do so, and that’s selling.
Habit number 14, this is the habit of self-awareness. Know your strengths, and know your weaknesses. You should always lead with your strengths. For example, if you know that you’re an excellent public speaker but you’re terrible at math, surround yourself with people who can help double check your paperwork, who can help make sure that the numbers work in your proposals, who can make sure that everything ads up with your monthly book of business, and spend more of your time out speaking, developing your business, and growing. When you know your strengths and you have that self-awareness, you can spend 80 to 90% of your time operating in an area of strength, and spend the other 10% of the time outsourcing your weaknesses, building a team of people who can help you bolster your weaknesses so that you don’t have to worry about them ever. That self-awareness is critically important, and you should spend as much time reflecting on it as possible to be honest an admit to yourself what your strengths are, and focus on them as often as you can.
Habit number 15 is confidence. I want you to make sure that you are not the humble sales person. Nobody hires the humble sales person. If you don’t tell people about your value, about the value you can provide, no one will know about it. You have to go out into the world and make sure that you’re willing to promote yourself. If you’re in the top 10% in your company, brag about that. Tell people about that. The reason that you’re in the top 10% of sales professionals in your company is because you are in the top 10% of helping people. You’re in the top 10% of making people more money. You’re in the top 10% of solving people’s problems. Have the confidence to go out and talk about things you’ve accomplished, people want to be around successful people. People forget humble people, people forget humble people who don’t ever promote themselves. People want to be around folks who are confident, not cocky, but confident. Share your accomplishments with the world when you have the opportunity to do so.
Habit number 16, thick skin. Someone’s always going to be unhappy with something you’ve done. Someone’s always going to be unhappy with something you’ve said. People are always going to speak about you behind your back. It doesn’t happen as often as you think it does, but when you hear about it you don’t need to worry about it. It’s not a big deal. The only thing that matters is that you like what you see when you look in the mirror. There are people who are your clients who are going to project their own failures onto you, and your company. The minute something goes wrong and their boss breathes down their neck, they’re going to blame things on you. This can’t be something that you take personally.
The reason? It’s not about you. It’s always about the other person. 2 things to keep in mind with regard to having thick skin. Number 1, people don’t talk about you as often as you think they do. Number 2, you’re never going to be able to control what people say anyway. Make sure you do the best you can, offer the best value you can to your clients, and then be happy when you go home at the end of the day knowing that you’ve done everything you can to deliver enormous value to your clients.
Habit number 17 is resilience. The best way to recover from the loss of business is to go out and find new business. Whenever you lose a client, and we all lose clients, go out and double your efforts to find new business. Be as aggressive as you can, get back to basics, go through the 60 second sales process from the beginning, and work each action item in the 60 second sales process over and over again. Resilience is bouncing back in the face of adversity, and sometimes adversity can be just the jump start you need to go on to have your best, most productive time ever. When you face some sort of adversity, go back to basics and double your efforts to achieve the goals that you set for yourself right at the beginning.
Habit 18 is persistence. You can overcome a lot of obstacles if you’re persistent. In fact, you don’t need intelligence to be successful when it comes to sales. You don’t need a lot of the techniques that we’re teaching you. These techniques that we’re teaching you are shortcuts, but you don’t even need a good list. You could go out and meet thousands of people who are wrong, if you’re persistent you will be successful. Now, in the 60 second sales process we’ve given you a step by step guide to being successful. It’s a giant shortcut. You’re going to triple your revenue by implementing this system quickly. That will help you get down the road faster.
If you combine those tips, and the skills, and the strategies with persistence, you are unstoppable. If you combine those with persistence, there is no way anyone will be able to ever stop you or hold you back in any way. In fact, when you make mistakes, if you just keep coming back, you will be even more successful the next time because you will know the path you’re walking down because you’ve walked it several times before. Persistence is the most important habit in success in business, and in success in life. Simply keep at it until you achieve your results, and you will be successful in the end regardless of the obstacles in front of you.
Habit number 19, invest in personal growth and development. Select 3 areas in your personal life, and 3 areas in your professional life each year that you would like to focus on for your growth and development. In each of these areas invest a portion of your time so that the sum total of all of them is 10% of your time at minimum, and 10% of your income at minimum. This will ensure that you are growing year over year, and you’re keeping your edge. The goal is for you to grow, for you to improve, for you to develop. While you’re doing this you’re out pacing your competitors, because the competitor you care most about may only be investing 5% of his time, or none of his time in personal growth and development. You’ll be amazed at how quickly your income accelerates when you invest this time in your own personal growth. 3 areas in your personal life, 3 areas in your professional life. Invest your time, invest your money, grow them each and every year and your bottom line will increase as a result.
Habit number 20, become a part of a support group or a mastermind group. We all need people to hold us accountable. You need an accountability partner, but it’s better to have an entire group of people holding you accountable. Find a group of your peers, or a group of people who are in your industry and they’re as successful as you are, or even more successful. Meet with them, share your best practices, learn from their best practices, and agree to hold one another accountable. This is critically important. Meet on a monthly basis, and hold 1 another accountable.
Napoleon Hill, the author of the great book, “Think and Grow Rich,” used the mastermind principle as 1 of the keys to growth and development in the most successful business leaders he interviewed. I will tell you that there is nothing more valuable for you than to lay out your goals in front of another person, or a group of people. Help them understand where you want to go, let them introduce you to the best practices they’ve used to get them there, and then have them hold you accountable for the action steps you need to take in order o grow an develop.
As you go through the 60 second sales process, write down the things you want to accomplish from each action step, and then when you meet with your mastermind group, share the actions you want to take with them, and make sure they hold you accountable for actually taking those actions. The next time you meet with them have them discuss those actions with you, and the results you’ve achieved. This will expedite your growth, and it’s the most powerful habit of them all.
I’ve just shared with you 20 of the most powerful habits you can implement. You can use these habits throughout the course of your sales process, and of your life. Whenever you feel like you’ve hit a bump in the road, come back to this step in the 60 second sales process, and go through all 20 of these habits. In fact, it’s a good idea to review these habits at least once a month so that you know that your mindset is correct, your heads on straight, and you’re pointed in the right direction.