Optimism Increases Sales Productivity

Do you get 80% of your business from 20% of your clients? The same is true in sales. 20% of a sales force typically bring in about 80% of the sales. Moreover, in sales, the best salespeople...the ones who consistently over-achieve...are not necessarily the most talented. Why is this?

The answer lies in how individuals handle adversity. Ability and motivation aren't sufficent predictors of sales success. In sales, expectations of success or failure are often self-fulfilling prophecies. In other words, the ability to succeed and the desire to succeed are not always enough without...the belief that one will succeed. A person with the innate talent of Mozart will come to nothing...in the absence of belief. This is particularly true when the task at hand is challenging and requires the persistence to overcome obstacles and setbacks.

It is the nature of selling that even the best salesperson will fail far more often than succeed. Optimistic expectations are critical to  success by helping the salesperson overcome the adversity that inevitably arises. Resistance, rejection, and hostility all come with the territory. Without an optimistic mindset,  high turnover and burnout are likely outcomes.

The good news is that optimism can be learned. The first step is to identify self-defeating beliefs which the individual may not be initially aware of, as well as to identify the events that trigger these beliefs. The second step is to gather evidence is to gather evidence to evaluate the accuracy of the self-defeating beliefs that are triggered by these activities. The third step is to replace the corrosive, self-defeating thoughts with more constructive accurate beliefs. Here's an example:

• Reality: "I was rejected in 20 straight cold calls."
• Pessimistic response: "What's wrong with me? I'm just not cut out for this. I guess that I'm not good with people, nor am I very persuasive."
• Optimistic response: " OK...so I got 20 straight rejections. Sales is not always fun and games, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about me...and I'm sure not getting anywhere feeling sorry for myself. My branch manager told me to get one sale today. I have to get 5 prospects interested, and in order to get 5 prospects interested I need to make  50 call. So I have to make 50 calls to make 1 sale, and no matter what I do, I'll get turned down a lot more than I'll get one sale. And if someone hangs up during the first 5 seconds of a call, that obviously has nothing to do with me."

In essence, this means changing the internal dialogue that goes on within us all, but that often goes unquestioned and unchallenged. In other words, if someone else called us "Loser" and "Stupid" for the 20 straight rejections, we would probably vigorously defend ourselves against this unjust criticism. However, when the doubts and pessimism bubbles up from within...it is taken as fact and goes unchallenged.