#831 No Whining!

I'm going to be a little snarky today primarily concerning salespeople, but the example transcends professional selling.

I speak to struggling salespeople all the time in my training seminars.  One of the things I hear is, "It's really hard Frank.  The constant rejection is killing me.  Some days I just can't pick up the phone or go out and knock on a door!"

Maybe I don't have the right personality to teach sales seminars because I have to admit, at that moment, it's really hard for me too…

Hard for me not to do a Don Corleone slapping Johnny Fontane yelling; "YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN!"

Seriously; if you can't do your job without whining about it, it's time to change jobs or at the very least change the way you think about the one you have.

Salespeople: we all love the moment when the client says yes and shakes our hand, and we all love a nice commission check but, what is that; one percent of our selling lives?  The other ninety-nine percent of our time is spent taking care of clients and engaging in activities that get us to the closing table and yield those nice commission checks.

Pundits say gratitude journals work well to help you recognize and bring to the forefront the good things you have in life, and it's true; they do.

The opposite works well too.  If you aren't mucking out stalls for minimum wage or working on the clean-up crew at a chicken processing plant, put yourself there in your mind.  Imagine that's your job, and you have no other opportunity and no way out.  Imagine that shoveling out stalls at the racetrack all day or mopping up chicken guts and blood was the only job you could get.  Now tell me again about how, sometimes, people reject you, and you just can't take it. 

I refer you back to Corleone and Fontane.

Own your sales gene…