Have you been watching the Winter Olympics?
You have to admire those competing…they’ve been working towards these moments for years and, whether they secure a medal or not, the 3000 athletes at the games are certainly operating at the upper limit of their ability and potential.
What’s the connection with your sales team?
I believe you should think of every salesperson in your team as an athlete. Because unless they are fully fit both in skills AND mindset, they are not going to be as successful as they could be.
And you’re the coach.
They need to excel in terms of their selling skills, communication skills, confidence, resilience and self-belief if they are to reach the upper limits of their potential. Once they have mastered the basic sales processes, your role is to coach, inspire and develop their growth mindset so that they can use their skills with ease and grace and become a master of their craft.
A world class sales athlete!
It’s a big responsibility. Processes and structures will only get them so far, it’s what goes on in their heads that makes the biggest difference to their performance, which is why you need to know and understand what’s in there. Only then can you decide the best approach to get them from A to B.
Sales Growth Mindset techniques you can use
To help you nurture your sales athletes towards gold medal standards, here are three of my tried and tested sales mindset development techniques. For each make sure you understand them and use them yourself before introducing them to your team.
One more thing…these techniques just happen to be very useful in any context, sales, career, health, family, you name it. Use the techniques and I guarantee you’ll notice a positive impact. And the more you use them, the easier they become.
1. TFAR
If you’ve not come across the concept of TFAR before it’s all about understanding how your initial thoughts carry through to impact on your eventual results.
Your Thoughts generate your Feelings, which inform the Actions you choose to take, and these deliver the Result you get.
Watch this video to get a full understanding of TFAR and discover how you can use it for yourself and others.
Once you’re familiar with TFAR, introduce it to your salespeople. You could use it on a one-to-one basis with your team, or as a group exercise. It’s important to remember that they don’t have to reveal their thoughts, they can go through the process in their head!
2. Taking Your Team Beyond The Comfort Zone
If you want your team to aspire to be elite sales athletes…then you’ll have to encourage them to get comfortable with being uncomfortable! That means stepping away from their comfort zones and into their learning zones.
You first though. When was the last time you felt uncomfortable, uncertain or out of your depth with your sales team? If you can’t remember that’s a red flag that you’re sticking with what you know…those habits that may or may not be serving you.
Yet you can only develop and grow as a sales leader if you go beyond your current comfort zone with your team. First things first, have a read of my previous blog about breaking out of The Comfort Zone and into The Learning Zone, practice on yourself before getting to work on your sales people.
3. The Valley of Reasons and Excuses
Again, a concept you’ll need to conquer for yourself first before you introduce it to you salespeople.
The Valley is the place we’re in danger of going to when things aren’t going our way. When you’re in The Valley, you come up with reasons & excuses to try and justify why you’re not generating the results you want. The issue at play here is that, once you start coming up with these reasons and excuses, you are relinquishing responsibility for your results and blaming someone else or something else outside of you.
What’s important to realise when you do this, is that you give up your personal power and become a victim to these external issues.
To understand The Valley concept and how to use it to help with your own performance and that of your team, click here
The Finish Line
Embedding these sales mindset development techniques in your team will ensure they take more responsibility for their results, are more proactive and more willing to try new things. They will be well on their way to developing a winning growth mindset, achieving ‘personal bests’ and grabbing some gold medals along the way.
