5 Ways To Overcome Negative Thinking in Sales

“See the positive side, the potential, and make an effort.” ~Dalai Lama

By a show of hands – how many of us go for an hour without experiencing negative thoughts? How many of us go for a whole day without having negative thoughts running through their heads?

The reality is that the great majority of entrepreneurs and sales representatives think and speak negatively without realizing it. For some, it’s their social conditioning, while for others it is because they have become desensitized and do it to fit in to the culture.

Our advice to all entrepreneurs, sales managers and sales representatives is to be careful about what you think most of the time because you will attract it whether you want it or not. We have also come up with 5 tips to help you overcome negative thinking and increase your positive outlook on the work that you do:

 

1. Become Conscious of the Things that go Through Your Mind

Don’t become alarmed over the number of negative thoughts that are running through your head. If it happens and you notice it, then let it go and avoid talking about it aloud to colleagues, friends and managers. As well, think of the ways in which you can change your negative thoughts into something positive. For example, you can change “I am not getting any sales today” thought into “The sales environment is challenging but I am up for it.” Give it a try!

2. Change the Way you Feel

This is the most difficult part of the process. To unfreeze the feelings you want replaced and refreeze the new ones, begin by visualizing the outcome(s) you desire. The outcome must be real and measurable and something that you can achieve in a decent period of time.

3. Take Affirmative Action

If no action is taken, change will never take place. Actively go about your day and apply what you have learned every time there is an opportunity. It will be difficult to do so at beginning, but if you have the perseverance and the strength, you will be able to over come your negative thinking.

4. Surround Yourself with Positive People

Call upon a friend or colleague who you know could give you constructive, yet positive feedback. When you’re stuck in a negative spiral, talk to people who can put things into perspective and won’t feed your negative thoughts. Two negatives, don’t always make a positive.

5. Read Positive Quotes

Every Monday, in honour of #MondayMotivation and #MotivationalMondays, I add a post-it note with a positive quote to my board. This board serves as a reminder to me and my colleagues to stay positive, especially during the most pressing times.

 

Becoming successful in sales is never easy, but everyone has to start somewhere. The first step to sales success is to embrace productivity and realize that the change is for the good. The second and most crucial step to sales success is to invest in the right software that will help you stay motivated  and A+ player. Download a free trial of  InfoFlo CRM Tool here.

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7 Tips To Encourage Your Customers to Buy

Sales is the lifeblood of any small business. Without sales, you have no customers — and without customers, you have no revenue. Here are 7 useful tips to help your customers buy your products or services.

1.  Use The Power of “Limited Stock”

Do not underestimate the power of the last item on the shelf! When there is limited stock, last remaining items on the shelf can be a major enticement/bribe for customers to buy them. The fear of running out of something that may be needed can encourage an undecided consumer into immediately making up their mind.

2.  Don’t Pressure Customers

When speaking to your customer or visitor, do not come out as too keen or over zealous for their business. Show them that you are prepared to walk away rather than appear over enthusiastic about them making their decision right there and then. Doing this removes the pressure and allows them to take their time and make the right choice that they will not regret later. They may even leave, reflect and return on another day to make that very same purchase.

3. Schedule Some of Your Prospecting at Off-Peak Hours

Calls that are made at 8 am or 6 pm will be received by decision-makers that are more willing to talk and have a lot more time on their hands. And never under estimate the value of leaving voice mail messages at night when everyone has left to go home. Your message will be the very first one that your prospect will be hearing in the morning, thereby increasing the odds of them returning it.

4. Always Ask the Right Questions

If you want to recommend thee most appropriate products and services that your prospects will value and will meet their needs, you have to ASK the right questions. If you ask the right questions, your prospect will let you what they are looking for and how they need to be sold.  Prepare a list of questions that will help you determine what is better for the client. Use a checklist or survey to help guide you in the prospecting process.

5. Follow Up and Follow Through

Follow-up and follow-through are two of the most important predecessors of prospecting success. Just like gardening, if you don’t water the seeds, the garden will not grow or flourish. And so it is with prospecting, if you don’t remain in contact, you will never turn the lead into a sale.

6. Set Priorities

When you delegate a task, always give a due date and a relative priority, in relation to the things already on the task list. Use a task manager to help you prioritize the tasks you need to complete during the day.

7. Believe in Yourself

Finally and most importantly, remember to believe in yourself. Why should anyone buy anything a person who doesn’t believe in what h/she is selling? There’s a reason why confident salespeople are more successful. Make sure your one of them. Click here to read about the mysterious mind of a sales manager.

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5 Productivity Hacks for Successful Sales Managers

Need to help to become more efficient at work? Do you have enough time to get all your tasks done? Here are 5 productivity hacks all successful sales managers should consider:

 

1. Turn Off Alerts

It’s extremely easy to be diverted from your important tasks by phone alerts from social media channels, emails, text messages and the like. It is a wise idea to shut those notifications off while you are at work and focus on the critical tasks at hand. Your productivity will skyrocket once you tell your phone you are not interested in what it has to display.

 

2. Drink Water

The majority of us do not drink water as much as we should be. Our bodies prosper on drinking water – it gives us more energy, keeps us hydrated and gives us an excuse to get up and take a break from the chair we’ve been sitting on all day.

 

3. Make the Most of Lost Hours

Talking on the phone while driving is illegal in many parts of the world, so we would never suggest this to anyone. What we do suggest is to download industry-related podcasts on to a tablet or phone and listen to them on the way to work and on the way back home. Waiting at the doctor’s office for your turn? Maybe catch up on industry news and blogs.

 

4. Allot times for emails

Checking and responding to email is one of the biggest time-sucks. If you don’t believe us, try to monitor your email usage for one whole day and add up all the minutes you spent on this task. A new study by McKinsey & Company found that workers spend 28% of their day reading and answering emails; the second most time consuming activity in a work day. Resist the urge to answer every ping you get. Set times throughout the day in which you will check emails and resolve issues.

 

5. Have a Day Plan in Place

If you’ve ever come home at the end of the day with that sinking feeling of “I didn’t get anything done today,” this productivity tip is for you. It’s easy to get bogged down in the cycle of responding to situations, people, and other emergencies. But rather than letting others dictate the course of your day, have a plan (task management) in place for proactively completing projects and tasks.

Everyone is of course different in the way that they set up their day. We’ve shared  with you an infographic that explores the hacks LinkedIn Influencers use to save time and increase their daily productivity.

Productivity Hacks from LinkedIn Influencers

 

Source: LinkedIn

Download your CRM Software free trial today. We’ll help you become proactive and productive in no time.

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How Old Do You Look?

We came across How-Old.net on Twitter via the hashtag #HowOldRobot this morning. The site is an insult-triggering website that was recently built by Microsoft to guess people’s age and gender based on an uploaded image and is definitely begging for trouble.

Microsoft never thought that this website would be so popular as it is today. In fact, it was planning on having only 50 visitors to test it. Instead, the website has garnered interests of over 35,000 people and is one of the most trending topics on Twitter today. It appears that if you publish a game or an Internet parlor trick like this, there is no end to the information people will give out for free.

Pranksters and people with a sense of humour, who are in search of a lunch break distraction, have been uploading photos of themselves, their dolls, celebrities and other images to the platform to see how uproariously funny it is if the tool is out by a year or two.

The tool is not always accurate. In fact, it suggested that Pamela Wallin was 87 when she is actually 62. It was almost on the dot with Toronto Mayor John Tory who they suggested was 56 when he is 60. And as for President Barack Obama, well the Microsoft reader predicted that he was 58, when he’s only 54.

It’s an oddity, but it demonstrates how Microsoft is forward thinking about data, facial recognition, and all kinds of other out-of-this-world technologies. It’s a little taste of things to come in the future.

It’s coincidentally #FridayFunday on social media and on the World Wide Web. This is a great way to end off a long, tiresome week with a few laughs and awes.

I wonder if Microsoft will integrate this app with Windows 10 when it goes live in a few months.

Have a similar idea that you would like to market to your customers? Try InfoFlo CRM Software for free for 30 days.

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