...psychological locker that is. Remember in high school when you used to leave your gym uniform in your locker for a couple of weeks without washing it and how things started to stink. Well, just like dirty laundry in your gym locker we collect dirty laundry in our "psychological locker" too. However, instead of a dirty gym uniform our "psychological locker" gets clogged with negative thoughts that tend to weigh us down and impact our "outlook".
A sales persons "outlook" (self esteem) is their own general sense of how things are going in their career and life. Negative events in our lives have a tendency to negatively impact our self esteem, which limits our ability to do the tough things we need to do in sales. It impacts "bravery" a critical strength in determining sales performance. Until problems or negative events in our lives are resolved they will continue to have a negative effect on our self esteem and performance.
Sorry, problems in your personal life you'll need to deal with by yourself, but there are a lot of "problems" in our day to day selling activities that can also end up filling the locker. An example: as you sit and read this post there is probably a call you need to make that you have been putting off. You know... a customer who is upset about something that happened, or you need to make a call to a customer about something you know they are going to be unhappy about. As long as you delay the call, it stays in your "locker" and will negatively impact your outlook and bravery. Not doing what is tough is a condition commonly called procrastination, and is driven by fear of failure. Ironically, putting off what we need to do increases the likelyhood of failure!
So, make a habit of making the tough calls you need to make at the beginning of the day. That's what "clear out your locker" means. If you do the tough things first, the rest of the day will be a lot easier and with the locker "cleared" those negative issues will not affect you. You'll also find that tackling the tough issues up front will give you a great sense of accomplishment and enhance your personal sense of self value and improve your outlook. Implement this strategy daily, "clear out your locker" and you'll have more productive days!
Comments