In this video, we discuss how to have a good headspace when working in sales. This can be helpful because working in sales can be a rollercoaster ride with many highs and lows. If you do not have or maintain a good headspace, that can not only negatively impact how you feel but can also impact your sales results by dragging down your motivation and level of activity.
1. View selling as a skill
When you lose deals or face rejection, it can be understandable to feel some self-doubt and wonder if you are cut out for sales or if you have what it takes to be successful. If you ever feel that, keep in mind that selling is a skill. And one that can be developed and worked on. With that, there are things you can do to improve. You have the ability to improve how you handle common sales situations, and that can not only decrease the amount of rejection, resistance, and objections you face but also improve your sales results.
How to apply this for creating good headspace when working in sales, try to set a side time each week to work on your selling skills. This might involve reading a book, watching videos, or attending sales training programs.
2. Become more prepared
There can be a lot going on in your head when working as a salesperson. You might feel a fear of rejection when it is time to pick up the phone. This could create call reluctance and cold call anxiety, which not only can cause you stress but will also decrease the number of calls you make.
You might also worry if you will know what to do and say when a prospect answers your call because conversations can be quick, and you know what direction they might go. Performing well during cold calls can be difficult regardless of your level of sales experience. This complexity might decrease your level of confidence.
You can decrease all of this stress and complexity to create a good headspace when working as a salesperson by simply becoming more prepared. And while most people would probably understand and agree with that, they might not be fully prepared because that also can be complex and stressful given all of the different directions conversations can go.
The good news is that there are some very simple things we can do that will make us much more prepared for all of the different situations we will find ourselves in. Here are three things to organize and prepare before performing cold outreach:
- Value Points
- Pain Points
- Questions
By simply creating those three blocks of points, you will be much more prepared because you can mix and match those to create a cold call script, appointment script, objection responses, voicemail messages, and more. By having clarity about what to say in all of these different situations, you can greatly decrease a lot of the stress and anxiety that comes with sales prospecting.
3. View yourself as a helper
Another thing you can do to create a good headspace when working in sales is to view yourself as a helper. This is helpful to stop and think about because it can be easy to feel like you are more of a taker when you are trying to sell your product.
You are reaching out to prospects to try to take their time so that you can ultimately take their order and money. And when you operate with this type of mindset, you will feel like you are bothering prospects and that you should not call them.
But the thing is that the product you sell offers value and helps the prospects you are trying to sell to in some way or another. With that, when someone buys what you sell, you are helping things. This makes you a helper and not a taker.
When you are reaching out to prospects, you are not trying to push something on them; you are trying to talk them into something. You are seeing if they are in the group of prospects who need the help you have to offer. You are trying to help them. This shift in mindset should provide you with more purpose and give you more confidence when it is time to pick up the phone and call a prospect.
The way to implement this is to start by outlining the benefits your product provides and the problems it helps to solve. Our sales message brainstorming process can help you do that, and creating these sets of points will help create a good headspace when working in sales by allowing you to view yourself more as a helper than a taker.
4. Sales Affirmation
Another way to create a good headspace when working in sales is to incorporate sales affirmations into your daily routine. Sales affirmations are positive affirming statements about yourself, your product, or your company. In other words, these are all of the great things about what you sell.
With all of the rejection and fierce competition we face day in and day out, it can be easy to forget the good things about what we are selling. And sales affirmations are a tool we can use to remind ourselves of the good things we are doing and have to offer. By referring to those when we start our day or before we perform cold outreach, we improve our ability to create a good headspace when working in sales.
5. Compartmentalize
The daily life of a salesperson can be chaotic, with many different types of tasks that need to be completed. You might need to perform cold outreach to generate leads, work on existing deals and proposals, deliver presentations, perform administrative work, etc. It can be easy to mix these tasks together and bounce between them without any real logic. That approach can increase the odds of feeling overwhelmed and increase your level of stress.
Another approach to this that can create a good headspace when working in sales is to compartmentalize your time and tasks to create blocks of time for the different types of tasks you need to work on. When you implement this approach, you only focus on one type of task at a time and tune everything else out. Not only will this help you to be more productive with completing what you need to work on, but it can also greatly help to decrease the feeling of being overwhelmed, leading to a good headspace when working in sales.
6. Create Targets
When working in sales, you can sometimes feel like there is either too much to do or that you are running in place and not making any progress. Either of these can have a very negative effect on your mindset and headspace.
To help with this, you can create daily and weekly targets for what you need to do and work on. For example, you might have phone prospecting targets like 50 dials per day or two hours of cold calling. Or you might have a networking target of two events per week. When you create targets like this, you can have more clarity about what you need to do and work on every day, and that can help you have good headspace when working in sales.
7. Track Progress
Whether you create targets for yourself or not, it is helpful to track your progress for what you are working on and accomplishing. For example, you can track how many calls you make, how many appointments you schedule, how many demos you provide, etc.
Not only will this data help you to make sure you are doing what you need to do in order to increase your odds of success, but this data can also help you to have more of a feeling of accomplishment. That feeling can help you have good headspace when working in sales.
