How often do you feel hopeless after meeting a customer who gave you a cold shoulder?
You’re now going to learn about how to remain unwavering and build resilience and confidence in yourself and your abilities, even if the situation with your client is not so promising.
Your mindset will determine your level of success in sales, or lack thereof. A positive mindset can empower you to abolish hurdles and obstacles before they become too challenging.
It may be difficult to believe in yourself when everything around you, every meeting with your customers, every call and every presentation seems to be crumbling into pieces, but – staying resilient is the only way to trudge through the hard times and seeing yourself overcoming those challenges and motivating yourself to stay persistent no matter what.
Try these strategies to help you remain steadfast when you’re feeling the pressure of tough sales situations:
Strategy #1: Reflect on the Past
- Surely, you’ve encountered seemingly insurmountable situations in your sales career in the past. How have you succeeded in the most unpleasant conversations with your customers? Clearly, your ability to overcome these situations speaks loudly for your resilience, your strength and your abilities.
- In some situations, you may be able to emulate your past solutions by adapting them to fit your current challenging situation. Other times, you’ll be able to learn what not to do from past challenges with your prospects and all adversities you have experienced when selling.
- Your past does not determine your future. It’s possible to reflect upon your deals lost without working up old, unresolved frustrations and feelings. This is a positive exercise.
- If you begin to feel stress and negative emotions, avoid seeing the crisis in front of you as permanent. One very important way we build resilience in sales is by fighting permanence. A video about that is coming soon. Search and find another technique which can help you increase your resilience and confidence in your sales skills.
Strategy #2: Act Immediately
- Rather than retreating into your personal cocoon when a sales situation becomes intimidating, address it immediately. The longer you allow a situation to sit without your attention, the more urgent it will become.
- Avoid cornering yourself by creating a proactive plan now. Or, better yet, have a just-in-case plan before the difficult event ever happens. Big difference between mental toughness and resilience is that mentally tough people are prepared for difficult meeting before the meeting, and resilient people on the other hand are prepared for unknown. More about that soon as well.
- It’s okay to take a few hours to create a plan of attack. But, if you’re still brainstorming weeks from today, you may be stalling. That means that adversity took over your beliefs about the situation.
- Only you can be the source of a solution. You are in charge of managing your thoughts and ensuring your success in sales. Take pride in this power. After all, you’re free – no one commands you!
- Move toward your goals. Focus on what is important to you, not what blocks you. Your sales career and your life is what you make it. And you can use your power to start off on the right foot each and every day of your career in sales.
Strategy #3: Believe It
- You will make it through any adversity. You’ve found your way out of a tough situation with your customers before. You’ll do it now and again sometime in the future. Resilient salespeople always find the way. Remember, there is always a way to get your head above the water – always. Finding out the reason why a deal was lost is priceless information. The greatest lessons of all can be learned from the customers who said “no”. Every time you lose a deal, don’t just forget about it and try to move on. Learn what you have potentially done wrong and summarize what you can do differently to make it right in the future. As Zig Ziglar said, “If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.”
- Make meaningful connections. I am sure you have a fan base of supporters like your colleagues, your manager, your existing clients – and also your children, spouse, and extended family – they all are cheering you on every day.
- Chances are that no one doubts your abilities the way you do. In fact, other people have faith in your sales abilities because you’ve proven your strength, skills and resilience time and time again.
- Business challenges are not supposed to weaken you; they’re supposed to help you realize who you are.
- Now is as good of a time as any to show yourself what you’re made of. Confirm to yourself that you’re as strong and resilient as you suspect yourself to be.
Your Mindset
Everyone encounters hard times when selling – it’s simply a part of sales life and life in general. And a very major part of how you will address these hard times is dependent on your mindset and your ability to remain unwavering when customers apply pressure, even throughout the toughest of times.
Remember, resilient salespeople sell more.
Your mindset can be your best friend or your worst enemy. If you allow your mindset to shift into negative territory, you’ll end up with negative results. What truly sets the most resilient salespeople apart from the rest of the world is their mindset – how they identify with the company, products or services they represent and how they help customers reaching their personal and corporate goals.
Here’s what you need to do today:
Think about the biggest challenges you’ve face in your life.
- How did your mindset affect the outcome?
- How would the outcome have changed had your mindset been different?
- What can you do proactively to ensure the same challenge is easier to face next time?
