263: Sales Attitude, Image and Credibility

<p>We know that our attitude determines everything.  Henry Ford is often quoted for saying, “if you think you can or your think you can’t, your right”.  In the 1920s, psychologists understood that we can change our futures by changing how we think.  Up until that time, everyone talked about God’s will or fate and as individuals we had no options.  Today we understand the power of our mind to drive our behaviour in ways which will help us to realise the goals we have set for ourselves or which have been set for us by our boss.</p> <p> </p> <p>We all have sales targets to achieve, so our sales attitude is key.  We have to find ways to remain positive in the face of failure and setbacks.  Sales is a roller coaster of elation and despair.  You make your presentation to one client, with the same conditions of price, terms, etc., and they buy.  The next client presentation is a disaster and they don’t buy.  What happened to us between these two extremes? Often we have no clear idea but we have to pick ourselves up and call the next client.   How do we pick ourselves up though?</p> <p> </p> <p>I love these Winston Churchill quotes, “when you are going through hell, keep going” and “Never, never, never give up”.   But in sales, we do want to give up, because rejection and our feelings of failure are brutal.  Everyone faces negativity and we all suffer from different degrees of imposter syndrome, even if we have some degree of success.  Dale Carnegie has another useful quote, “It isn’t what you have, who you are, where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy.  It is what you are doing about it.”  So what are you doing about it? </p> <p> </p> <p>Let’s find ways of occupying our minds with positivity.  I was fired from my sales job once upon a time and it was doubly depressing, because I had been working so hard, I thought the big boss was going to give me a raise.  It was a cold Friday evening at 5.00pm, when he called me to his office.  I had read somewhere that a lot of job related suicides result f