Expectations are powerful. From birth we are subject to them. We are expected to roll over, crawl, walk, babble, talk and eat with utensils on a somewhat rigid schedule. If we are not on schedule, parents, doctors and specialists intervene to see what is going wrong. As we get older we are expected to act in a certain way by our parents, our friends, teachers and coaches. Some parents expect their kids to be doctors; some expect them to be craftsmen or politicians. If we decide to do other than what is expected of us, then usually there is stress involved as we try to break free from the expectation. Unfortunately this trend continues into adulthood. We absorb expectations unconsciously from the world around us. Consequently we have a certain belief about what is possible and that belief is based on our everyday experience of the world. The Optimal Salesperson® has high expectations for his or her performance.

We bring this process to our job as salesperson. We have a certain belief about how much we can earn and how much can be sold in a given year. We tell ourselves that these beliefs are reality based on the actual data. For proof we say things like: “The average salesperson in this industry makes $95,000. I think I am a little better than average so I am doing well at $105,000.” When I suggest to a salesperson who has that mindset that they should be able to earn $200,000, they explain how I don’t understand the industry, or reality or what the obstacles are that prevent that from being possible. If I point out that someone in another company is doing it, they politely explain that her situation is different because of some factor real or imagined. The Optimal Salesperson® focuses on the possibilities not the obstacles.

No one becomes a champion by accident. In every World Series or Super Bowl winning locker room the winners say “We set this as a goal at the beginning of the year. No one else believed in us, but we believed on ourselves and in each other.” You never hear the winners say “We don’t know how we got here. We never actually thought we would get this far. We would have been happy to win half of our games.” So take a lesson from that. If you are failing, expect to succeed. If you are succeeding expect to excel. And if you excel, expect to dominate. If you dominate you already do what I suggest in this article. Napoleon Hill said it best 65 years ago “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” The trick is to set your expectation high and then believe that it is possible. Once you do that you have been trained since birth to achieve that expectation.

When baseball players are in a slump, they go back to basics. They shorten their stroke; they focus on making contact instead of over swinging; and they take extra batting practice. Salespeople should do the same. Go back to the basics. Work on near term deals instead of “home runs”. Make contact by prospecting consistently and patiently, don’t rush through the calls. And make extra calls. The calls that don’t work are like batting practice.

Your outlook is how you see the world. If you have a positive outlook you see the glass as half full. If you have a negative outlook you think that nothing good can happen in this environment. The economy is bad, my company is suffering, nothing is going right, etc. the glass is not only half empty, it is cracked and leaking.

Outlook acts like a force multiplier when you are selling. It amplifies everything you say and do. Your outlook communicates itself through your body language and tonality along with the substance of what you say. You might ask for the order but if your outlook is negative it will come out sounding to the prospect like you don’t really expect them to buy. It will be difficult for you to even pick up the phone because you will say to yourself “what’s the use nobody is buying anything anyway”. If you do pick up the phone and you do ask a question, if you don’t get the right answer or the one you were hoping for, you will just give up resigned to the fact that there is nothing you can do and this is just one more example of it.

On the other hand if you have a positive outlook you are eager to get to work. You are excited to pick up the phone because the next call might be the prospect that makes your whole year. You are undaunted by rejection or not getting the answer you were looking for. You just back up adjust your approach and try again. you view the rejection as a necessary evil on the way to success in sales.

So how do you keep a positive outlook in the face of adversity? One way is to remember the good times and try to recreate them. Remember how you felt and how you acted when you saw the glass as half full. Focus on some part of your life that is going well, even if it is not the business part of your life. You can also find someone who has an “up” attitude and talk to the m. they will infect you with their enthusiasm. Ask them why they are excited and maybe one of their reasons will excite you as well. If all else fails … fake it. Pretend to be excited. But don’t go over the top or it will come off as phony. This video will help explain more about outlook.

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Dan Caramanico is a salesforce development expert and he is the author of Attributes of The Optimal Salesperson® One of Selling power’s top ten books for 2010 and Optimal Selling, Sales Conversations of the Optimal Salesperson.

Keeping your sales priorities straight is both simple and difficult. It should be obvious what we spend our time on but it must be difficult because so many salespeople spend time on the wrong things. Recently a client hired a salesperson that had great promise. He had all of the skills to be successful. He had and empowering belief system and he knew the industry. Yet, he was terminated within a year. What happened? He didn’t fail for lack of hard work. He didn’t fail because he couldn’t fit in with the corporate culture. He didn’t fail because he didn’t know how to sell or hadn’t been successful in the past. He didn’t fail because of the economy. They are in a growth sector. He didn’t fail because the company was impatient. He failed because on a daily basis he had his priorities mixed up.

He is (or should I say was) in a business with a three month sales cycle and an average sale that should be around $$40,000 to $50,000. He had personal goals that he could attain if he sold one of those per month. If he had done that, the company would have been ecstatic and he would still have a job. His first few weeks in the field he wanted to make a good impression and get a few quick hits. So he chased the first few projects that crossed his path. The problem is they happened to be $10,000 deals without too much urgency to close. Chasing these unqualified prospects cost John valuable time. Of the four he pursued only one closed and that took four months. So at the four month mark he had one small sale and an anemic pipeline. Now his focus changed. Instead of a quick hit he needed to show a growing pipeline so he focused on the wrong thing again. This time he went after the right sized projects but he didn’t care whether they were qualified or not he just wanted them in his pipeline to show management he was making progress. So six months in, he has a pipeline bloated with prospects that will never close and he is starting to attract some adult supervision from his manager. More meetings meant more time away from prospecting. At this point he was doomed and it was only a matter of time.

John had his priorities mixed up on a daily basis. His manager and the company were not expecting a sale for the first 4 months. One month for training and tree months to build the pipeline and close his first deal. John was interested in being a hero in the first few months and forgot about a few things. He forgot about his income goals and focused on the psychic goal of being the star. He forgot about the target prospect and allowed himself to be distracted by the promise of a quick hit. Then when he got behind, he forgot everything he knew and went into panic mode which is never good. What he should have done is keep his focus on his personal goals and his selling process and his target prospect. If he had only done those three things he would never have gotten off track. This video will help explain.

Have you ever over-prepared for a sales call? When you do you tend to over-think everything. You go into the call worrying about what you will say. You worry about what the prospects will say and how you will react. You start to choreograph the call by thinking “I’ll say this then he’ll say that. Then I will come back with …”. The problem is that you do your part but the prospect does not have a script. So, pretty soon you are “off script” and you are lost. Your plan for the call goes awry and you end up not making the impression you were hoping for.

This is a terrible mindset to take with you on a sales call. You are internally focused and not focused enough on what the prospect is saying. You will miss the cues the prospect gives you and you will fail to get to the prospect’s compelling reason to buy. So, the solution is to relax on the call and have a conversation with the prospect about what issues and problems they have which you can address. Don’t worry about anything else. Let me address a couple of the things salespeople tend to obsess about on sales calls that prevent them from relaxing.

SALES TECHNIQUES – I teach them but they are overrated by most salespeople. The fact is you should not worry or even think about techniques on the call.  If you have internalized the technique it will be there when you need it without you having to consciously think about it. If you don’t have it internalized yet, concentrating on it will not make it be there when you need it and you will most likely miss other important stuff while you are concentrating on looking for a place to use the technique.

PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE – Salespeople who worry about this are definitely focused on the wrong part of the problem. If you are worried about how much you know, then chances are you are looking for a place to tell the prospect what you know to either impress them or to convince them you have the best product or service. That is not why you are there, at least not on the first call. You are there to determine whether they have a problem that you can fix, and whether they have enough of a compelling reason to address the problem at this time and enough money to hire you to address it. You do not need a lot of product knowledge to do that. Anyone with at least a few weeks on the job should know what problems they are looking for. If they have a big enough problem with enough motivation and money to move forward, then you can bring an expert back to explain how you can do all of that. So, there is no need to worry about product knowledge.

The moral of this story is RELAX! Worrying and obsessing on sales calls is counterproductive. Simplify your life. Learn what problem you are looking for. Then go have conversations with some nice people who may have those problems. This approach will be much more fun, and, as a bonus, your sales will increase dramatically.

Motivation is internal. Sales managers can’t motivate salespeople. They can only help the salesperson to get and stay in touch with their own internal motivation. Some people are able to stay motivated without much effort. They have a high degree of intrinsic motivation. They were programmed or trained to constantly strive to do more, be more effective, reach higher levels, etc. This is not always a good thing as these “driven” people often have trouble relaxing or enjoying the journey to success. For salespeople motivation is more often external. Since salespeople are, in large measure, paid for performance in the form of commission, we set financial goals then work to achieve them. In a sense, we set our own compensation level.

The problem comes in the day-to-day grind of prospecting, rejection, proposal writing, staff meetings, and client meetings. When fighting the daily fight, ,it is easy to lose sight of why we are working and in some cases we lose sight of what we should be doing. Selling is not like other jobs where showing up is half the battle. Most doctors, lawyers, engineers, laborers, customer service people, food service workers and mostly everyone else show up and work comes at them. Salespeople have to be proactive and engage with the outside world. We have to overcome self-limiting beliefs that prevent us from being effective. So it is easy to see why we can get into a rut and just go through the motions to get through the days and weeks. After all, it is never a crisis to prospect for new business today … until it is probably too late to do anything about it that is! Sounds grim doesn’t it? But you can change all of that in a very short time.

When was the last time you revisited your personal goals? For most salespeople I ask, it has been a while. And I am not just talking about reminding yourself that your goal is to get a house at the beach. I am talking about reconnecting with the reasons why you want the house at the beach – the underlying emotional reason. It is important to remind yourself how you will feel when you get to the goal. In a very real sense your motivation to do the things you need to do will come from that emotional connection to the things or lifestyle that you want for yourself or your family. Is it a sense of accomplishment, fulfillment, duty? If it is just a “box you checked” on the goal setting form your manager gave you, it won’t move you to action. But if it is something you and your spouse have talked about, and dreamed about and you can’t wait to host some summer parties for your friends or you want your kids to grow with something you never had. That will get you excited and be a compelling enough reason to put the extra effort in to do the difficult tasks that top earners must do. Re-motivate yourself by reconnecting in an emotional way with your goals.