Indelible Marks

The Psychology of a Bad Salesman

February 25, 2008 on 12:18 pm | In Ideas, Life, Motivation, Self Development |

When you wake up in the morning,

You have two choices

Go back to sleep and dream your dreams or

Wake up and chase those dreams

The choice is yours.

Have you ever wondered what correlation, if any, exists between getting ideas and the bathroom…..? Well, I have.

I know someone else (a great motivational speaker) other than myself who also gets ideas in the bathroom.

The bathroom is a place where no distractions exist… Learn to shut out distractions and connect with your inner self. I do this a lot.  Are you scared that you might die of boredom if you are alone for a length of time? (No TV, No phone calls, No internet, no radio etc) Anyways, lest i digress as i am wont to do. I was going to say i got the idea for this article while in the bath. This isn’t TMI, is it?

So while i’m standing in line at the American Embassy (arggh, another story for another day, again? I hope I am not setting myself up with the repeated use of this phrase…eeeerm, search is disabled for now pls…LOL) i decided to write my first draft…anything to get me through the very long wait and the ziz-zag nature of the queue.

We are all in the selling business, so that makes us all salesmen and women. You are either selling your employer’s products and services or yours (You Nig PLC, skills and capabilities). After reading Deolu Akinyemi’s Selling Series (http://deoluakinyemi.com/2006/07/17/selling-001%20http:/deoluakinyemi.com/2006/07/20/selling-002/ and http://deoluakinyemi.com/2007/12/10/selling-003-account-penetration/),  i didn’t think there was anything else to add but alas, here i am attempting to chip in my 2 cents, i could even do it in bits of 1 cent each (*wink*, that’s 2 posts for me…i’m slowly evading paying the Set-Up Master).

I am not a psychologist but I found this definition of psychology which is quite apt for this article. It is the characteristic, temperament and associated behavior of a person or group, or that exhibited by those engaged in an activity. So here goes:-

  1.        The bad salesman says I can’t.Who will rescue him from his self-imposed limitation? The truth is, if he says he can’t, I’m afraid, he is right and with a very high degree of certainty, he can’t. C’est finit. He won’t be making an attempt any time soon. Well, since you can’t, can you at least try and be someone else who can do what you can’t. It’s called Acting and it’s a sure step out of this mode. Identify someone around you who you believe is a Master Salesman in his field of endeavour. Understudy him or her. Read about him. One of my favourite quotes is, “We must do what we think we can not do”. You can, will you?

2.         The bad salesman thinks he has a lot of options whereas in reality he has just two - Succeed or Succeed. So you are an engineer, an accountant, a teacher, a writer, a doctor and whatever else we like to see ourselves as, right? Anything else but not a Salesman? In the teacher-student scenario, we call it teaching or lecturing but isn’t the teacher selling knowledge to the students? Let’s get basic now, we call it conversation but are we not trying to sell our ideas to each other? The fine babe you are courting, no! toasting is what you call it, isn’t the reason why your heart cuts and you break out in cold sweat when you are with her, because you are having a hard time selling your self, vision and love to her? (lol). Now that we are convinced that selling is core to everything and everyone, shall we take it more seriously? The more we believe that there is a back-out option, the more laid back we would be at striving for mastery.

3.       The bad salesman thinks he has arrived. The most difficult part of success is not in getting there, but in maintaining it. Basketmouth once joked about how hunger was the main thing that drove him and a number of his colleagues to the comedy business. Funny as it may sound, Hunger serves as a very good drive or motivation, in this case, the one who is hungry for success will outdo the other who isn’t. I tend to agree with those who have cited the Super Eagles performance in the recently concluded African Cup of Nations tournament as a typical example of fielding a bunch of well-fed footballers who felt they were already made and as such had no drive. You need to have something that you are “up to” in life when you wake up in the morning. “I am a Big boy, I am a Big girl”, it’s a myth, if someone is deceiving you, better not deceive yourself. Up your game, you can always be better than your best.

4.       The bad salesman says “My heart will break if I hear another No”. The sooner you start psyching yourself up for the doors that will be slammed in your face (no be curse o) and the ishos (some “No” feel like 6inch-nails) that will be driven into you in this selling business, the better prepared you are for it. Richard Fenton says that to overcome the fear of rejection, the good salesman will intentionally increase his failure rate. Embrace the “Go For No” concept, the more people tell you no now, the more people will say yes in the long term. All we do is set success goals, he encourages that we start setting No goals. I totally subscribe to the “if at first you fail, try and try again” philosophy.

I guess this is the point where we begin to examine ourselves. The question for me is, “Am I giving this life my best shot or am I living like someone who has given up on myself”. The only thing worse than failing is not trying at all.

I have only one life to live, I will give it my best shot.

*TMI - Too Much Information

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