How do you look to business?

most of us totally over-react to circumstances that are neither awful nor brilliant and that if you get in a habit of reacting in a negative way it is not going to make you successful nor your life happy…. Imagine for a second that a client rejects your proposal to do business with them. As a result of this “lost sale” you miss your targets and end up getting sacked. Most people might well say that the event (the lost sale) was awful and would decide to have a sulk, get annoyed or maybe even go into a depression. But is that really true? What if, and as a direct result of that event, you walked into another client on the way home and landed a huge deal worth ten times as much as the first one, and instead of getting sacked you got a huge bonus? And then got promoted. You’d now say that the client rejecting you was destiny and that it was meant to be! This is particularly interesting because the one thing that hasn’t changed in these two scenarios is the event itself; the lost sale. The fact that you lost the sale remains constant and true for both. The only thing that has changed is how the event affects you and how you acted after the event. Remember this – events themselves are neutral, they do not have meaning. It’s you that attributes meaning to specific events and, therefore, it’s you who decides what those events mean to you. No matter how serious, life changing or life threatening. You only need to see how different people react to the same news to know that this is true. And this occurs all of the time… Have you ever got up in the morning and looked out of the window to see that it was snowing and that everything was white? If you then had to dig the car out to drive to work you’d probably think, “What an awful day, I wish that I could stay in bed. I hate days like this.” On the other hand, you have probably also woken up at a weekend or at Christmas, seen the snow and the picture card beauty, and thought, “How beautiful the world is. I love the snow!” On both occasions the event is the same, it has snowed, but the meaning that you attach to the snow has changed because of the differing circumstances. This in turn changes the way that you feel about the snow, your actions and therefore the results that you experience. If you consistently attribute negative meanings to specific events and circumstances and subsequently feel bad, you are rarely going to be in the right state of mind to make lots of sales. How do you react to a lost sale? A client negotiating? Rejection? Delays? Complaints? Targets? You get the idea… When I work with sales superstars I consistently notice that events that more average salespeople habitually see as negative and demotivational, sales superstars see as positive or as, at worst, neutral. What can you do to ensure that you see things in the most positive way so that you can maintain your motivation, your focus and your drive no matter what sales and business challenges you face?