The sales profession carries plenty of stress. Your sales results are out there for the world to see. You either achieved your sales quota or you didn’t, and it’s on a visible company dashboard.
Stress grows as the number of competitors increases each day. The internet allows small companies to look big. It’s harder to differentiate your products and services because competitors can quickly duplicate your latest disruptive invention or approach. We sell in a world where prospects are on information overload, often choosing to go with the safe option, existing vendor or status quo. If your sales team doesn’t know how to manage stress, it can be detrimental to their sales success.
When the body is stressed, it emits the stress hormone of cortisol, which creates fatigue, depression and lack of creativity. Not a good formula for achieving sustainable sales.
Research shows that the most successful people are those who can perform and thrive, despite adversity and setbacks. Take a look at two competencies that will help your sales team be more successful when the going gets tough.
#1: Locus of control. This concept was developed by American psychologist Julian Rotter, in the 1950’s. His research showed that people with a high internal locus of control believe they can control their outcomes despite external factors.
Just the opposite, people possessing a low locus of control blame external forces for everything — including their lack of success.
This concept shows up every day in sales. When things get difficult, the high-locus-of-control salesperson doesn’t blame or make excuses. She turns inward and asks herself, “What can I do to change my circumstances?” She applies the emotional-intelligence skills of reality testing and delayed gratification, analyzing recent wins and losses. Instead of blaming the marketing department for poor leads, she learns from the analysis and pursues only prospects that can and will buy.
The high-locus-of-control salesperson doesn’t use excuses such as, “I have a bad territory. My prospects are the worst.” Instead, she examines her sales process to identify any gaps in selling skills or approach. Her mantra is, “If it is to be, it is up to me.”
Salespeople possessing an external locus of control quickly default to the blame game. They run to their sales manager to demand more marketing support, better pricing, more accounts or a new territory. They look outside themselves for improvement, rather than inside to see what they need to change.
Sales managers can help build proactive, internal-locus-of-control sales cultures by asking high-locus-of-control questions. Remind your sales team that they can control their sales destiny by asking:
- What should you stop doing?
- What should you start doing?
- Who can you ask for help or advice?
- What is the one thing you can do each day that will help your gain more contacts with qualified opportunities?
- What selling skills can you improve through study and practice?
The research is clear: When a person takes control, stress lowers because they are in control of doing something! As a result, they are able to think more clearly, engage in better problem solving and act more decisively.
#2: Perspective. Many successful people have experienced more than their share of adversity. The difference in these high performers is their perspective on adversity.
Successful salespeople tap into the emotional-intelligence skill of optimism, which changes their perspective. When faced with adversity, these salespeople ask optimistic questions, different questions than their pessimistic peers, such as:
- What’s good about this adversity?
- What’s the lesson learned?
- How will this lesson serve me in my next sales conversation?
The optimistic salesperson perceives adversity as a gift rather than a setback. As a result, he gets back in the sales saddle, armed with new lessons and rides off to win the next piece of business.
The pessimistic salesperson, as you might guess, has a different perspective, resulting in different questions:
- Why does this always happen to me?
- Why don’t I ever get a break?
- Why do I have the worse prospects?
This type of thinking leads to more stress. Instead of seeking to improve, this salesperson indulges in negative self-talk, self-pity and “woe-is-me” behavior.
Sales managers, when you see a salesperson hosting a pity party, cut it short by asking the optimistic questions listed above. Ask the pessimistic salesperson to write down three lessons learned from their recent setback. Then ask the powerful coaching question, “What will you change on future sales calls because of these lessons learned? Would you have learned these lessons, this quickly, without the failure?”
If you want to equip your sales team in an increasingly competitive environment, teach and develop the two essential skills for managing stress. Grow your sales team’s internal locus of control. Change how they view adversity and failure.