Are you a sales victim?

Gary Harvey //December 23, 2011//

Are you a sales victim?

Gary Harvey //December 23, 2011//

No one is buying! If it wasn’t for the economy, I would be selling more! I have terrible prospects!

Are you guilty of saying any of these statements? Or even more detrimental, are you a leader of a sales team and you’re saying this to them and accepting them saying this to you?

If yes, then you have become a sales victim. Either a victim to your self-limiting beliefs or, if you’re a sales team leader, you have become a victim of your salespeople’s victim mentality. What do I mean by a sales victim? I believe in nine out of 10 sales outcomes, there are no victims, unless you “allow” yourself to be a victim. It seems victimhood is in style now in our society and blaming someone else or circumstance for their lack of success. Sadly, in this recession I see that victim mindset transferring over to many salespeople and even to business owners and their sales teams.

So I made a bold statement: “There are no victims” in the sales profession. My belief is if you’re not being successful at selling, then you might be a bystander in the process and not an active participant at preventing victimhood and maybe unknowingly a participant in the blame game.

“No one is buying!” Really? No one? If you go on a sales call believing that, guess what? Odds are it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for you and no one buys. So no one buys and you say to yourself, “see no one is buying, I was right.” You become a victim of the “no one is buying” self-limiting belief that your buying in to. Henry Ford said, “if one man thinks he is right, and the other one thinks he is wrong, there are both right? Ask yourself, “is the outcome of my sales calls a result of my beliefs (positive or negative)?”

If you believe “it’s the economy,” then you are again a victim. You’re allowing yourself to be a victim to all the garbage yourself and everyone is telling you how terrible the economy is. I’m not suggesting you be in denial that there aren’t some definite challenges selling in this economy. However, notice I used the word “challenge.” Do you view the economy as a “challenge” or a “problem” when selling? The Marines say, “There are no problems, only opportunities.”

If you buy in to all the negative information, as well as your own self-limiting beliefs about the economy, then you have allowed yourself to be a victim vs. and opportunist. An opportunist sees “opportunities” in this economy, not problems and refuses to have a victim mentality and be a victim. Just like the Marines.

If you’re a sales team leader, business owner, president, or CEO of a company, what are you telling your sales team each day? Positive or negative statements about the economy they sell in each day? Remember, if they hear it from the top that it’s terrible out there, they’ll start believing it if their top person believes and reinforces that belief all the time.

Allowing yourself to be a victim is the easy way out for not being responsible for your sales results. Therefore if salespeople choose to be a victim they justify why they don’t need to work on changing or improving beliefs, behaviors, and skills. And change requires responsibility for your sales outcomes.

Regardless of your belief about Tim Tebow, when the Broncos are behind, do you think he views himself as a victim of the score or sees that as an opportunity? Every time you find yourself falling in to the trap of accepting, believing, and “buying” in to all the negative garbage (problems) out there about selling in this economy, stop and ask yourself, “will today I choose to be a sales victim or sales opportunist?”
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“Gary Harvey is the founder and president of Achievement Dynamics, LLC, a high performance sales training, coaching and development company for sales professionals, managers and business owners.” His firm is consistently rated by the Sandler Training as one of the top 10 training centers in the world. He can be reached at 303-741-5200, or [email protected].