In my life I have the joy and pleasure of helping others to achieve their goals and ambitions. I regularly get calls from people who have attended one of my seminars or who have bought one of my products telling me that they have doubled or trebled their sales. Whilst this is personally gratifying I have long wondered what it is that actually changes for these individuals that propels them to get these phenomenal results?

As many of my seminars are purely mindset / motivation based it?s not the skills (important as they are) so it has to be some element of mindset, but what?

What is that empowers some individuals to walk out and double their sales virtually over night?

My opinion is that the ones who get the instantaneous results are the ones who manage to locate and destroy sales loser beliefs that are holding them back from what they want to achieve. This 10-step exercise will help you to find and remove any limiting beliefs that are stopping you from achieving the success that you deserve?.

1. Consider different sales situations e.g. cold calling, presenting, negotiation?

Think about your job on a day to day, week to week and month to month basis. Think about different sales situations that you get involved in, particularly ones which you may find difficult or challenging. Examples might include cold calling, making sales presentations, negotiating, closing, prospecting, dealing with awkward customers, managing service level issues, handling complaints, fielding sales objections?

2. ?What emotions do you experience??

Get in touch with how you really feel about these situations. If you feel bad it will effect your approach, pace, tone, pitch, words, body language and therefore the results that you get. Our society is focused on repressing emotions and managing behaviours but ultimately your behaviour will stem from your emotion so it?s important that you reclaim this valuable information.

3. Does this support or limit me? Help or hinder me? Drive success or failure?

Is this emotion useful in this situation? If you?re walking into a major negotiation and you feel scared is that the emotion that you?d like? If you need to cold call and you feel nervous or devalued does that help? Not likely. Be as honest as you can be here. Everyone experiences unresourceful emotions from time to time. The question should not be whether you do or not but whether you do anything about it or not!

4. ?What do I believe that causes me to feel this way??

Our emotions are mostly driven by our beliefs about a situation. Two salespeople in the same situation will often feel entirely differently. This is down to their beliefs about that situation. If sales person 1 thinks that their product is too expensive, when the client says, ?It?s very expensive!? they?re likely to think, ?Damn it! I knew it!? They?ll probably get depressed and either walk away or give away their product.

If sales person 2 thinks their product is absolutely worth the money and the client says, ?It?s very expensive!? they?re likely to think, ?Yeah! But it?s worth it!? and set about asking questions to start to build up the value again in relation to the client?s business situation.

5. Is this true? Is this absolutely true?

Most of us see our beliefs as reality so once you capture this little bug you need to question it?s reality by asking whether it?s true or not. Often you?ll get the answer that it is true so keep asking yourself over and over and ask like you mean to get an answer. If it?s not absolutely true then chances are it?s a belief.

6. Has there ever been a time when this wasn?t true?

Your objective now is to find just one time that this wasn?t true. If you can, it?s a belief. Let?s say for example that you believe that cold calling is a waste of time. This belief might well cause you to feel unmotivated and down when forced into cold calling. Ask yourself if there has ever been a time when this wasn?t true? One time when either you or someone else got something out of cold calling? If there has then it?s a belief and not a reality.

7. Would a sales superstar believe this?

Still struggling to shake the little critter? Try an out of body experience?. Imagine the best salesperson you can envisage standing next to you. Would they believe this to be true? When negotiating some people are consistently more successful than others when defending revenues and profits. Much of the reason for this is down to belief.

Try spending some time with the best negotiator you can find and elicit their beliefs. Next time you enter a situation and you find yourself thinking, ?We?re going to have to offer X here to get this?? try asking yourself if your sales superstar would truly believe this? If they wouldn?t, what would they believe?

8. What?s it costing me to believe this?

One powerful way of getting leverage on yourself is to work out the cost to yourself of holding your belief. I once worked with a chap who believed that selling at a 20% margin was the most that he could ethically commit to. After considering his ethical reasons we studied the performance of the rest of his team who were selling at 25-30% margin. We calculated the personal financial cost to him of this lost commission over 6 months, 12 months and 10 years! When he realised that 10 years of holding this belief would cost him a villa in Spain he was far more willing to let it go!

What is your belief costing you? personally, financially, emotionally and spiritually?

9. What evidence contradicts this?

Search for evidence to contradict your beliefs. Most people spend most of their lives collating evidence to support their beliefs. This is fine if they?re superstar beliefs but totally unproductive when they?re not. Find people who don?t believe the same as you. Study top performers. Listen to clients. Create your own loser belief rebuttal programme. The more evidence that you have to contradict a belief, the easier it is to let it go.

10. How would I benefit by letting this go now?

Consider what you could achieve by letting your belief go now and adopting a sales superstar belief. How will it benefit you financially and personally? How will you benefit in your career? How will others see you? What will it do for your relationships? Your morale? And your long-term health? What about your security and your happiness?

For the last 10 years, sales motivational speaker and author, Gavin Ingham has been helping sales people to explode their sales performance by turning self-doubt, fear and lack of motivation into self-belief, confidence and action. With his inspirational approach to sales performance and motivation Gavin combines commercial experience, personal excellence and communications technologies in delivering personal and business sales success.

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