Everything is A State of Mind

Everything starts with a thought. What you think about eventually creates what happens in your life. I say ‘eventually’ because can you imagine if there was no time lapse between what you thought and what actually happened: like you’re sitting in your living room daydreaming about tigers and without warning, a tiger suddenly appears beside the coffee table! Or, let’s say something bad happens, and you feel so miserable you think, ‘I wish I were dead.’ Well, you don’t want that thought to become immediate reality. So having a time lapse between what you think and what happens is a good thing. It is one of the few times that procrastination is helpful.
You see, thoughts are whirling around your mind from the moment you wake up in the morning, to the moment you fall asleep at night. They are like seeds blowing through your mind. And you may have noticed that while some thoughts are great, others are really depressing. The amazing thing as far as your life and your selling power is concerned, is that you are in charge of those thoughts. You decide which ones to grab hold of, nurture and bring into reality, and which ones you allow to simply pass on by.
There is actually a scientific equation that explains how thoughts turn into reality. It goes like this:
Intensity X Duration = Force
The intensity of your thought multiplied by the amount of time you think about it, equals the chance of it happening or not. For example, if you think you are an amazing salesperson who closes 99.9% of deals, and you continue thinking it day after day, with passion and enthusiasm, you will create yourself as an amazing salesperson who closes 99.9% of your deals. If on the other hand, you think you are a lousy salesperson and think it for a long time with certainty and passion; you will create yourself as a lousy salesperson.
You must have met people in your life who are always down on themselves. Who always have some depressing story to tell about their past, present or future? And what kind of life do they have? A depressing one for sure. It can’t be any other way. What we believe and think is true, becomes true!
You create your life from what you think about most. So if you think, “I’m going to be really amazing today. And when you put your energy into positive action you will have an amazing life because what you believe in your mind is the reality that you create for yourself. There are many stories in various walks of life that prove this to be true; people who have joined a company at ground level and have gone on to become the CEO. I know a lawyer for example, who after seven years of working for a law firm realized he hated it and what he wanted to become was a facilitator. So he worked for us for a few years and then decided he actually wanted to train lawyers how to sell. So that’s what he does now. He’s happy, his company is happy and his family is happy; a win-win-win situation!
If you are in sales and you don’t like it—then decide what you want to do and find out how you can become it. Everything begins with a thought and too many people live their life on auto pilot, as if they are living life by default. They just happened to fall into a particular line of work and stayed there for 20 years being unhappy. Well I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way. You can be literally whatever you set you mind to be.
Now of course thought always needs action. You can’t learn a new skill just by thinking about it. You have to put passion and enthusiasm into the mix and when you do, it will be much easier than you ever thought possible. It’s about having a positive mental attitude. Have you heard of W. Clement Stone, he was a prominent business man who built the Combined Insurance Company of American in the late 1920’s and which by 1930 employed over 1000 agents and exceeded $1 billion in assets?
Stone was born in Chicago and was only three when his father died. He started his business career when he was six, selling newspapers to help support himself and his mother. When he was sixteen he went to Detroit to help his mother with an insurance company she had opened there. Soon he was making $100 a week selling casualty insurance and was a prime example of a character right out of the stories, in which poor boys make good.
Stone emphasized using a ‘positive mental attitude’ to make money for himself and for millions of people who read his books. He teamed up with Napoleon Hill to author, Success through a Positive Mental Altitude. The amazing thing about Stone was his appearance; he had a pencil-thin black mustache, vibrant suspenders, polka-dot bow ties and spats. He was also a very gifted inspirational speaker who would shout “Bingo!” at board meetings if attention lapsed. His most often used quote was, “All I want to do is change the world!” He died at the age of 100 as one of the wealthiest men in Chicago.
One of the most interesting things to me about Stone, was his passion to achieve greatness in his life. According to people who knew him in the early days he could only pay his salespeople in company stocks, which at the time had little or no value—those salespeople went on to become millionaires themselves later on when they cashed in their stocks. He believed in his vision, and they believed in him! It was all a state of mind.
I spoke to Ken a friend of mine who joined Stone’s insurance company when Stone was sixty five. He said about Stone, “He was a short man with a lot of power. He came to London once a month for the sales meetings which were held at the London Hilton. He was at every meeting, and when he made a presentation he shouted—more loudly than you can imagine. Once he gained control, he would quiet down; he earned the right to be there by taking control rather than by asking for permission.
EARNING THE RIGHT TO BE THERE
When my wife Val, sold for Pitney Bowes it was fairly easy because she was given a territory which already had many established customers. Of course there was still the cold calling to build the existing customer base but many of the sales were to clients who already had a lease or owned the equipment and wanted to upgrade it. As she tells it; “One of my managers was a guy called Tom who had a huge amount of enthusiasm. I was driving a Z-26 silver grey Camero at the time and he would say to me, ‘It’s an American car, so drive up in front of the building so they can see you in it.’ He was always very aware of how we approached customers and if there was a grass area he said, ‘Don’t walk across the grass, people are watching us, and we don’t want to appear that we don’t care about their landscaping.’
One of the things Tom taught me was to do whatever it took to get the deal. One of his strategies was to show the customers on a piece of paper, how the postage system worked for their situation. It was usually a very rough drawing with felt marker pens and on the side of the paper he would put the dollar savings in really big letters. Now Pitney Bowes has lots of very sophisticated, glossy brochures to show the systems and potential customer savings. But for Tom, he had found that to draw it in front of the customer worked really well for him and he closed many deals both large and small that way.
It taught me that earning the right to be there was about knowing the product inside out, and making the system or service easy for the customer to understand. Tom’s presentation method was definitely unique, and it was the most simple and straightforward for clients to understand. Not only that, they could see that this salesperson knew what he was talking about so it gave them a lot of confidence.
Of course, when we were selling very large postage systems which dealt with millions of envelopes we made formal presentations, so of course it all depends on the audience.”
A very successful salesperson once told me, “I always warm up before calling my important customers. Whether I am on the phone or face to face, I do a few cold calls to get warmed up so that when I call a special customer, I am ready to get down to business.”
Earning the right to be with a customer is about being professional and feeling that you have the right to be there. Are you at the top of your game? Do you look the part, dress the part, and feel the part? Would you want to purchase a product from you? Would you want a close relative to be sold something by a person like you? Are you trustworthy? Are you prepared to listen? Are you a professional salesperson? If you answered “yes” to those questions then you have earned the right!