“The winners in life constantly think in terms of I can, I will and I am. Losers on the other hand concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have done or what they don’t do” – Dennis Waitley

Allowing self-limiting beliefs to constrain  performance, will in turn limit sales results because like everyone, salespeople hold stubbornly to private beliefs about themselves, clients, markets, competition, and even the economy, beliefs that can have an enormous impact, either positive or negative, on their sales achievement levels.

If salespeople do not see themselves as providing value for their prospects and clients, they will tend to approach customers in ways that appeal to reasons for buying other than the  genuine business need of the customer. This is what sometimes leads salespeople to oversell, for example, pressing a customer to act now in order to get a low price or to be too accommodating. It also can lead salespeople to adopt unethical behaviour, because they may try to sell a customer something that they neither need nor want. If they fail to take care of their clients best interests, salespeople will fail to build long-term relationships and lose customers.

The Slippery Slope:

Typically, salespeople who believe that if they had lower prices, they would win more deals, tend to attract more price objections. This in turn leaves them feeling scared or reluctant to talk to prospects about what they have to offer. Their downward spiral then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Salespeople’s desire to succeed may be so dominated by a need to be liked, that they’ll avoid asking prospects for information that is needed to identify the prospects’ compelling reasons to buy. When this happens, closing becomes a real issue because salespeople, fearing rejection, perceive that asking for the order might cause a breakdown in the relationship with their prospect.

Summary:The Importance of Divine Intervention From Above

Most sales managers grasp the concept of activity management, skills development and knowledge development. Intuitively, they also understand the vital importance of the right mindset. Yet far too many feel powerless to help their salespeople turn their negative beliefs into positive ones. Those few sales managers who do tackle such negative beliefs and are able to change their salespeople’s self-limiting beliefs into empowering ones, have found an unbeatable path to success.

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