Developing a Winning Sales Mindset
One of the more noticeable traits of high-performing salespeople is that they have an incredibly strong mindset, or what we may call a winning sales mindset. Your mindset is how you see and process the world around you… and the events that happen to you. And winners have a resilient mindset—they just won’t quit.
Every single person has a mindset—that is not up for debate. The key is that your mindset is either fixed or open. Travis Bradberry puts it like this:
“With a fixed mindset, you believe you are who you are, and you cannot change. This creates problems when you’re challenged because anything that appears to be more than you can handle is bound to make you feel hopeless and overwhelmed.”
Where does a winning sales mindset come from?
So, the question is, where does a growth mindset come from? I believe it comes from four key places:
- Confidence. Of course, we must now ask, where does confidence come from? My answer is that it comes from skill development (or practice) and the experience of trying and coming up short. Every time you fail at something, you can either simply fail, or you can decide to fail forward. Don’t waste your failures, and please don’t repeat them. Ask yourself what you can take out of the experience that will make you better moving forward. The Navy SEALs, who place incredible importance on the power of mindset, call this “full benefit,” meaning they want the full benefit of every life experience, even if that experience provides some temporary discomfort.
- Gratitude. You are either a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty kind of person. Are you easily discouraged by seeing those around you that you perceive to have more than you? Or are you appreciative of what you do have, both in terms of material possessions and relationships that have blessed your life? I do my best to practice daily moments of gratitude, and doing that tends to drown out most concerns or complaints that I have.
- Development. You are responsible for your professional development, not your employer. Of course, I hope they do some things to help you, but at the end of the day, it is up to you to develop into all that you can become. Reading is a huge help with this, as reading allows you to share fellowship with great minds. The book Mindset by Carol Dweck is an excellent read.
- Your Circle of Relationships. Are you surrounding yourself with people who constantly push you and inspire you? Or are you hanging around people who mostly complain and bring you down? Football coach Urban Meyer says it this way: “You are either bringing the juice to the team or you are sucking the juice out of the team.” Which are you?
In a profession as tough as sales, don’t neglect your mindset. It will be the one thing that keeps you pushing on when every fiber of your being wants to give up.
Don’t quit. Never ever!
From Mark Trinkle, Chief Growth Officer
Anthony Cole Training Group
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