#993 A Butcher in a Vegan Café

I have a sensitive dog. He’s a living, breathing anxiety barometer. He spends his day lying by my desk, but the moment something goes awry (a Zoom meeting freezes or I have trouble with an application) and I express my ire out loud, he gets up and leaves. Goose, that’s my dog, removes himself the moment he feels any tension in the air.

Why am I talking about Goose? Because people have this ability too. We are calibrating machines, constantly (unconsciously) adding up a plethora of clues and interpreting their meaning in accordance with our stored standards. Goose makes it obvious when he skedaddles at the first sign of tension but don’t, for a minute, think people don’t have the ability to read non-verbal cues just as well.

I was talking with a group of young salespeople last Friday and made this point for them. When you are at 100% of goal on the 15th of the month, people seem to throw deals at you for the rest of the month. However, when you’re at 15% on the 25th, prospects treat you like a butcher in a vegan café.

Why? Because of calibration. People don’t hear you; they feel you.

Confidence is attractive; desperation is a repellant.

The workaround, believe it or not, is work.

That’s it. Even when you cannot control the flow of business, you can control the work. Meaning that if you are consistent in your prospecting, your pipeline will have possibilities, and possibilities will boost your confidence even when the deals are still hanging up. You’ll show up standing tall rather than stinking from desperation

Own Your Sales Gene…