March 2019 - Meaning2Work

The Stoic Salesperson: Want to Feel Invincible? First, Make Peace With Pain

Boxers make peace with pain photo — Photo by Hermès Rivera via Unsplash.com

The closest thing I’ve ever felt to a knockout punch is a well-timed, customer objection. Like an unseen blow to the temple, it only takes one of them to bring a sale down. While I suspect the pain from an uppercut can linger for months or years, I know the regret from an objection can seem unforgettable. Just as the only way a boxer can truly avoid a hit is to never step in the ring, the only way a salesperson can avoid objections is to never attempt a sale.

Sure, we don’t like the discomfort and nervousness objections produce, but don’t we feel the same when we watch a scary movie or our favorite team in the playoffs? Why then do we avoid, or agonize over, the difficult situations that can make us succeed?

There has to be more to it. A boxer walks into the ring knowing she will get hit hundreds of times and probably feel serious pain. “I was surprised how much it hurt to get punched,” said no fighter ever. Obviously, they’ve made piece with the pain well in advance.

What do we really fear?

The key problem to address is not the hit or the objection itself, it’s the pain. Conquer your fear of it and the punch no longer needs to be avoided. Similarly, when we can handle or dismiss the sting of objections, we can stop dancing around them.

I suggest the reason objections can hurt so much is the meaning we give them. Consider the following thoughts:

If I can’t answer an objection I risk losing the sale.
If I lose the sale I may not make my sales goal or lose a contest.
If I don’t make my sales goal (or lose) I’m a bad employee, parent, person, etc.

Do they sound familiar? Of course, these worries may not be at the top of our mind, but peel back the layers and they’re usually there.

How can we handle the pain?

Stoic’s, like Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, believed all we control is our own choices, actions, and beliefs. Customers make buying decisions; we do not. Managers make the only official judgements of sales performance. Again, we do not. However, feeling ashamed as a result of our job performance, that’s our choice. Therein lies a true opportunity to change ourselves for the better.

How can we change? We can choose no longer to feel anger or shame over events out of our control, like the choices customers and bosses make. In 25 years of selling, I’ve been layed-off three times. None of them were pleasant. Fortunately, I’ve learned to no longer live in fear of failure. I begin every sales call knowing, despite my best efforts, the customer may choose against my product.

No, I don’t win every sale these days but I win much more now that I don’t fear losing. I can take the punches, fall down, and get back up. No one has ever died from an objection. You can be imperfect and still be unwavering or almost invincible. First, you must make peace with the pain.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Ps. I’ve taken sales questions from over a hundred people. Check out my responses on my profile page on Quora.com!

The Stoic Salesperson: All Stress Is Internal (And Why That’s A Good Thing)

Stress and the Stoic Salesperson — Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash.com

Just to reiterate my previous post, no, we don’t control other’s and the decisions they make. And, that can be tough to swallow, especially when we must watch our friends, family, and customers make bad decisions. It’s at these moments when Stoic Philosophy implores us to take control, not of others, but ourselves. A primary example is job-related stress.

In Sales, a bad year or even a bad quarter can put us out of a job. Despite giving everything we have, we still lose deals, and when we do, it can hurt. Rest assured, it’s normal to feel this way at first. True Stoic Philosophy is not about eliminating our emotions, but getting them under control.

Although it’s unrealistic to never experience sadness or anxiety, some salespeople waste too much of their day anticipating and reliving their losses. Whether it’s the firing that never comes, or the sale that got away, we can trap ourselves in a cycle of reliving an event, over and over.

In this fashion, we waste valuable energy stressing over events we did not, or will never, control. Even worse, we confuse work and worry. If you believe the late Andy Grove, the one-time CEO of Intel who wrote a book entitled Only the Paranoid Survive, we all get paid to worry about the future. Perhaps paranoia is a prerequisite for top executives. For the rest of us, it’s a recipe for mediocre effort and even burnout.

Therefore, it’s essential for salespeople realize the choices they make every day. How do we want to feel, stressed or empowered? Paralyzed with fear or ready to take action? The Stoics would point out that our day-to-day mood, and the resulting choices we make, are some of the few things in life we DO control. It’s important to understand, one can choose not to feel stress and still be effective or even excel at work.

So, who would choose a career frought with stress and unhappiness? Only those who don’t realize or believe they have a choice. Ultimately, when we acknowledge that stress comes from within, we take back control and fuel ourselves to sell with more vigor and enthusiasm than stress could ever allow.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

The Stoic Salesperson: You Lost! Why it’s Not Your Fault

You didn’t win President’s Club!

In your place onstage stands someone else shaking the hands of senior leadership claiming to be better than you. In this moment you want nothing more than for it to not be true. No, you can’t change the numbers from the past and you don’t have to fall back on excuses or bitterness. Instead the key to your come back may lie in Stoic Philosophy.

First, ask yourself, was it your name etched onto the sales trophy at the beginning of the year? Was winning this year’s sales contest a simple matter of obtaining what’s rightfully yours? Obviously not. So how then can you lose something you never owned?

Every sale requires a choice, one made only by one person, the customer. If you don’t believe me call your biggest account and ask if you can make buying decisions for them. As you can see we in sales exert influence, not control, over our customers.

A core tenant in Stoic philosophy is knowing what we do and don’t control. In the end your sales results are the output of many decisions for and against your product. How many of these choices do we control? Zero. Come to think of it, how many customer decisions did our higher-performing co-worker control this year? Zero.

Unfortunately, most of us aren’t evaluated directly on our influence, but on our sales results. One of these data points is easy to measure; the other is not. And again, if customer influence and sales results were one in the same, we’d sign the sales contracts ourselves. Is it unfair to be judged based on decisions of out our control? Maybe, but Stoicism teaches that feeling upset by this fact is also, our choice.

Therefore, instead of personal wins and losses, you now have permission to focus on customer wants and needs. After all, isn’t that what we’re here for?

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

For a free and inspiring lessons on Stoicism, check out Ryan Holiday’s podcast, The Daily Stoic.

Filling the Void: How to Make the Best of Down Time

When it comes to travel, it’s all about the bag you carry. Take two identical suitcases. Despite weighing the same, the one stamped to a Carribean vacation feels infinitely lighter than one ticketed to a sales meeting in Des Moines, Iowa. Traveling for fun and traveling for business can look very similar, yet feel very different. For vacations, we count down the days until we leave, for work trips, the days until our return.

Why do we hate business travel of all sorts? It’s not the work. Selling makes each day go faster. Conversely, it’s the dead time in-between the work. Whether it’s time spent driving, flying, or in hotels, it all feels useless, and for good reason. By driving 30-40k miles, I spend an estimated 50 working days a year, staring through my windshield. Other salespeople leave town for weeks at a time. Either way, it amounts to valuable time siphoned right out of our lives!

Still, we all accept sales travel as necessary, but does it have to be a necessary evil? Thanks to technology, we have more choices to pass the time than ever. Unfortunately, they’re not all created equal. Some time-killing activities make us feel and perform better, and some ultimately make life more difficult. Below is a guide to help salespeople make the most of down time. Consider avoiding the bad behaviors and replacing them with the better options provided.

AVOID THIS: Unhealthy or Dangerous Habits

Yes, ideally, we’d all snack on quinoa and green tea all-day. Back in reality, we satisfy ourselves, on occasion, with unhealthy habits. Afternoon escapes to our favorite drive-through or retail wonderland can have harmful long term consequences. In fact, one habit is likely to feed the other (I love puns, please don’t judge!). Other habits, like texting and driving, put our lives at risk and should be eliminated. It’s helpful to remember the quicker the satisfaction arrives from a given activity, the quicker it leaves..

REPLACE WITH THIS: Learning and Creating

Consider the following temptation-inducing situations. Stuck in an airport terminal? Grab a book! It’s one of the best ways to sharpen your mind for selling. Have a long drive ahead of you? Download and listen to an audiobook! You’d be surprised how much time you can fill without extra calories or credit card bills. And what the heck do I mean by Creativity? Travel time provides the ideal environment to brainstorm! In fact, many of Meaning2work.com’s posts started as dictations to my iPhone while driving. The key, I’ve found, is to learn and write about subjects you enjoy. You’ll arrive at your destination, refreshed and fulfilled instead of haggard and annoyed.

AVOID THIS: Co-worker Gossip, Office Politics

Photo by Axleandre Boucher on Unsplash.com

Nobody’s perfect and we all need to let off steam, on occasion. It’s nice, at first, to know someone else shares your sorrow and frustration. As an ongoing topic of conversation, however, commiserating does little to make us feel better. We all know, that at times, life sucks. Why should we waste time bringing ourselves down? After all, bad luck has a way of interrupting us whenever it wants.

REPLACE WITH THIS: A Focus on the Future and Collaboration

Relax, no pom poms are required! Without using false positivity, we can acknowledge current problems and direct our conversation to actions. This is one of the most powerful ways we can use down time. Your mood will lift when you focus on what can be done instead of what can’t. And, talking through alternatives forces us to organize thoughts into logical form. In this way, the practice of verbally responding to a customer problem, in the safety of a coworker phone call, helps bring the solution to light. In my experience, trusted colleagues have helped to formulate my best ideas!

AVOID THIS: Negative Self-Talk

We’ve all done it. The minute we’re out of a bad sales call, we review it in our minds repeatedly, and experience the same pain, repeatedly. We know something must be our fault, so why not everything? Refer to “Your Worst Sales Manager: A Survival Guide” earlier in this blog for more on negative self-talk. Stories abound of perfectionist types, like Steve Jobs, and how much they accomplish. Does anyone ever ask them how happy they are? It’s good to be driven, as long as you also enjoy the journey itself. Sorry perfectionists, instead of making us better, self-criticism usually makes us worse.

REPLACE WITH THIS: Stoic Philosophy

Stoicism is the belief that we don’t control others, only our own choices here and now. And, not only do our choices include our actions, but also our feelings. Try listening on your podcast player to Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic. Each episode lasts less than five minutes. Neither pro or anti religeon, Stoicism is simply an empowering acknowledgement of reality. Learning it is like being handed something you’ve tried to find for years, the rules to life. The choice of what to do with the wisdom is yours.

Getting Started…

There are many books and courses designed to help us optimize our down time. Some may be quite effective, given the time and effort. To get started, I offer a much simpler idea; use positive habits to crowd out negative ones. Think of your time like a garden. If you fill it with good things like seeds, fertilizer, and water, you can grow a bountiful crop. Otherwise, the weeds take over. Let’choose to spend our downtime wisely and cultivate the lives we want!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com