For the seller, it is essential to start the year motivated, go through it enthusiastically and end it with success. Of all the skills that a professional salesperson must have, there is one that must be developed in order to cope with the number of rejections, challenges and work overload that sales activity has: the ability to self-motivate.
For a seller of these times, in which the newscasts do nothing more than indicate how bad everything is; where clients live worried about their expenses and pressured by their jobs; In which insecurity makes their task much more risky and in which the goals set by their managers are increasingly frustrating, it is very difficult to maintain the smile that all sales books recommend. But even more difficult for the seller is to find who motivates him, who encourages him and who gives him strength. For the aforementioned, the only alternative to achieve success is to know how to self-motivate and how to program yourself mentally to face any adversity. This is another reason behind my book and my idea of sales madness: To be happy, without external reasons and with the only impulse to choose to be,you need to be a little crazy, Crazy for Sales.
The Super Motivated Seller visualizes goals, plan and strategy.
Motivation is the energy or impulse that mobilizes and directs a person's resources towards achieving a goal. So you can't find motivation to do something if there is no goal. If there is no goal, there is no drive or energy to successfully complete the task. And it is not a sales objective, purchase objective or subsistence objective, but rather a goal of personal fulfillment.
When the Super Motivated Seller is asked what he looks like in ten years, he is able to describe almost exactly where, what he will be doing and how much he will earn. Because at every step, at every kilometer and at every moment you have to think, you build your dream and plan how to achieve it. He knows that the failures choose not to think about the future, they prefer those moments to listen to radio, music or to distract themselves from thinking about effort and plans.
Dear reader, now mentally answer the question: “'How am I going to be in ten years?'” (Think carefully about the answer before continuing to read the next paragraph).
If you answered in an exact and concrete way as it will be seen in ten years, for example “owner of a textile business with six branches that is going to be called Textil Éxito, which is going to be billing one hundred thousand dollars per month and is going to be located in, it will have this beautiful logo, and it will open in, etc., etc. ” It is because you have a guaranteed medium success. If instead his answers were "better than now", "with a family", "with a lot of money", etc., etc. is that you have not thought about it and then you only depend on luck to get it. If this was your case and you are lucky, skip this chapter. And if you answered things like "worse than now", "if I am not kicked out of here, I will be doing the same" or "I hope it is okay", etc., etc., then you will not do it or hopefully,because with that attitude you would surely spoil even your good luck.
Using the analogy that is usually made between the ship and life, I believe that there are four ways of being captains of our life.
1. Sailboat without destination
When there is no certain destination or objective to reach, the captain of the ship accepts all good winds, constantly changing course. If you ask him where he wants to go, he will surely say "to a beautiful port, with beautiful beaches, a heavenly place". His wishes for success are very clear, but he depends entirely on the fate of the winds. When at the end of his trip he ends up in a port in the middle of war, the worst of all, he will surely say "I sailed excellently, I was a captain without a single mistake, but life brought me here, I was not lucky for others". In the same way, those who have wishes but no direction, plans, or strategy manage their lives.
2. Sailboat with destination
When there is a certain destination or objective to reach, the captain does not go off course, even if more favorable winds appear, although he must go through storms. You are very clear about where you want to go, and you want to be there. If you ask him about his trip, he will say "to the Caribbean, to the best beaches in the world, to a place that is a paradise and that is six miles from here in that direction." However, although the destination is clear, he does not have a plan or a travel strategy, so as soon as the wind is against him he does not know how to respond and ends his trip far away from where he originally wanted. At the end of his trip he will say "I knew very well where I wanted to go, but life played against me, it gave me all winds in the opposite direction."In the same way it happens in life with those who know where they want to go but do not prepare to face adversities. They end their lives saying "I knew what I wanted to do, but I had no luck, not a chance."
3. Sailboat with destination and defense strategy against adversity
If the winds are going against it, this captain knows that he must lower the sails to avoid backing down. When this happens wait in that place until a favorable wind arrives towards your destination. If this does not happen, he will end his trip saying "I never backed down, the winds could never take me where they wanted, but after a long trip luck did not bring me a single wind in my favor and I had to finish my trip here, in the middle of the ocean ”. Identical to how some people live, who did not get to where they intended in life, and end up saying "I never fell, but I was not lucky, that was my problem."
4. Sailboat with destination, defense strategy against adversity and PLAN.
This captain knows that it is not enough to know how to defend against adversity. That is why he draws up a Plan and prepares, studies, thinks and concludes that depending on luck is a very big risk and that it is best to depend on yourself, and if adversity comes you should use it in your favor. somehow. So he discovers that by placing the sails diagonally against the wind, his boat advances in that direction, and thus, zigzagging he reaches his destination, later, but he arrives.
He is also the Fool for Las Ventas, he ends his life saying "late, because life always came against me, but I succeeded because I had a plan and I followed it with all my soul and intelligence"
Like this last example, the Fool for Sales behaves. At the end of his life he says "I took time to achieve it, because life always came against me, and I succeeded because I had a plan that I followed with all my soul and intelligence"
Once a professor at the faculty asked me a question that left me thinking for a while that I should spend more time thinking and planning what I want in life. He asked me, "How many sheets have you written for your studies and work? And how many books have you read about the subjects you study and the work you do? I proudly answered "this year between two and three complete notebooks, thousands of computer sheets and more than seven books." The teacher, seeing me aware of the amount of writing and reading, asked me this mobilizing question “and how many sheets have you written and books have you read about what you want in your life, about what you want to achieve and about how you are going to do to achieve it? ? ”. I remember lying to him saying "many" but the reality is that I did not spend an hour a week planning my life.And despite the success I had at that time in my work and study career, I could not assure anyone that I was on the road to what I had always wanted for myself, and today from a distance I can confirm that I was not.
The Super Motivated Seller enjoys his job even if it is the worst he has ever had, because it is always part of his plan.
As we saw before, the Super Motivated Seller has a life plan that leads him to think about a long-term strategy, not accept opportunities that deviate him from his goal and sometimes accept jobs that are not ideal, or those that are not ideal. He would have chosen before having a plan, but they serve as a stepping stone on his ladder of success, because of the experience, the direction they have or the opportunities that are feasible to come off it.
Looking for motivation in external factors is difficult. We all hope to have motivating jobs, motivating bosses and a life full of extrinsic reasons to be happy. The truth is that the only way is to find motivation within yourself, in a clear and self-designed life plan. I always say to my students something that I would have liked to hear in my student days “it is very good that you are great protagonists of your life, but start being the scriptwriters too, that nobody writes you the role that you must play, you choose to be the little boy hero".
