Sales training ideas – 6 ideas for keeping a healthy sales attitude.

Sales requires you to have a thick mental skin. Not only do you have to handle your personal problems, but you also must deal with many professional problems. Lost sales, an angry customer, or a botched service call on your best customer’s equipment—all of these can challenge your attitude. While no one is entirely immune to the effects of negative events, there are a few things you can do to build up your mental immune system and help ensure that you succeed in sales.  

6 Ideas to Stay Positive in Sales 

1) Stay healthy.

Eat, sleep, and exercise. Use common sense. You know how much sleep you need, and for the most part you probably have a real good idea about how to eat right and exercise properly. If you have a problem in any of these areas, you won’t be able to focus well on anything including selling and sales.   

2) Find ways to keep yourself mentally pumped up.

Get some motivational books, tapes, and CDs. Look for stories, movies, and music that inspire you. Make a list of all the tremendous events in your life, everything you’re thankful for, and all the times you want to remember, and then focus on those as much as you can. Use affirmations such as “I can do it,” “I am the best,” and “I feel healthy, I feel happy, I feel terrific.” Say them with as much enthusiasm and energy as you can when you first get up in the morning and during the day.  Keep in mind that you control what happens to you. It is what you strive to become and the obstacles you overcome that will determine how you feel about yourself. Look for challenges, conquer them, learn from them, and grow. Take time out on occasion to focus on the big picture. Also, strive to achieve balance in your life.  

3) Assign the proper meaning to events.

Probably the best way to make yourself immune to the negatives of life and develop an extremely strong psyche is to adopt beliefs that empower you. See problems as challenges to overcome. What can you learn from each situation? How can you best handle each situation? How might you look at the situation differently? Is it just your negative attitude or is there a real problem? If there is a real problem, face it head on and tackle it immediately. 

4) Keep your perspective.

Very few things are matters of life and death. One large sale made or lost will not make or break you. If you lose a big sale, you might have to work harder to recover; however, there are more sales to be made. If you make a big sale, enjoy it but don’t rest on your laurels. And don’t take things personally. A rejection of your offer is not a rejection of you. 

5) Be positive yet stay grounded in the real world.

Be cheerful and optimistic, expect the best, but have a plan for when the worst happens—because occasionally it will.  

6) Watch your mental diet and stay away from negatives.

Your mental diet is just as important as your physical diet. You have to watch what goes into your brain. Here are some suggestions for counteracting the negatives in your life and focusing only on the positives: 

• Avoid television except for inspirational stories or movies, sports, and other “good” television. Avoid negative movies, stories, and music.
• Instead of watching the local news, watch the national news or CNN.
• Skip the local newspaper except for the business, weather, and sports sections. To stay abreast of current events, scan the front page.
• Instead of listening to music on the radio, listen to motivational, inspirational, or educational tapes or CDs.
• Be very selective about whom you hang out with—they will have a major impact on you.
• Work at a job in which you are growing, or where there is potential for you to grow.
• Your thoughts are the one thing over which you have complete control. If you don’t like them, change them. While it may take some work, but you’ll find that if you do work at it, little by little you can develop the habit of having only positive thoughts.
• Avoid negative environments. A smoky bar in the bad section of town is probably not the most productive place to be. Use your best judgment.
• Avoid any situation that tends to bring out negative emotions. You will have to attend a wake or funeral from time to time, or visit someone in the hospital, and you should. Don’t break accepted social rules; just don’t torture yourself with situations or places that continually bring you down.  

Your attitude and your state of mind are extremely important to your long-term sales success. Put lots of good things into your mind and surround yourself with the right people. If you do what you need to do each day with a positive frame of mind, and never give up on your goals and beliefs, you will be successful in sales.