Well that title is a mouthful, isn't it? Lots going on there and tons of room for conflict in all kinds of ways. So if you could, for just a moment, suspend all your thinking on religion, judgement, and preconceived notions on what I am about to say. Track with me if you would the opening construct and why it matters and know it is not my purpose to persuade you to my spiritual beliefs here.
Sales, as a career, is harder because of what we face in relationships than because of the mechanics of sales.
The effort of sales activity regularly places us in a perception of conflict with our buyers in both their minds and our own. It happens in our actions, our presentations, our words, our products and in everyones expectations.
You see, the nature of our world is that we are effectively asking someone to, "change" which by itself is often an uncomfortable proposition, and to do so, the buyer has to recognize that need. The range of "fight or flight" responses they throw back at us if we don't recommend change at the right time (when they are ready) is simply amazing.
Unfortunately, what often happens is that one of their strategies for resisting change runs headlong into one of our personal triggers for being "good enough" or valuable as a human being. Many times, this head-on collision of wills and feelings happens so fast we are never aware they have occurred. The Cognitive Behavioral Psychology folks call this an, "automatic thought" because it has long since been relegated to a habit in our mind.
When we enter the field of sales, if we are going to be effective we must turn our attention to what is important to our buyers. Unfortunately, we don't give up our automatic thoughts automatically! Consequently we WILL have these moments, when their responses to us will cause us to have thoughts and feelings which don't really promote great salesmanship. When we act on 'em, we injure the relationship and the sale.
If you are with me so far, congratulations, it's kind of dry, I know.
Here is the payoff.
By having a spiritual faith that goes beyond ourselves, our belief in our value is determined by that faith. While this is always a growth process for us mere humans, being on that path allows us to recognize and give up our own automatic thoughts that feel bad during a sales effort much quicker and refocus on our customer and their needs for the betterment of the sale.
The greater overall impact here, a spiritual faith, helps release the emotional beliefs of all value judgments we carry that tell us we are not good enough. More than just in our sales career, this freedom is powerful for all of our relationships and all of our efforts.
Feel free to comment, either for or against if you like. I know this is only the first post on this topic I expect to share as we go forward and I would love to have your thoughts for some of the rest of them.
Respectfully Submitted
Michael D Goodman
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