Optimism and Salespeople

I recently had a conversation with the VP of Sales for one of my clients who was stumped and asked for my advice. He has a sales team member that has consistently been one of the top two or three salespeople for his organization, never missed a goal and was generally in the 115-120 percent range. This salesperson has been struggling recently and the VP had observed a big difference in his attitude. Without some type of intervention, there would be no way for this salesperson to hit his goals. While the salesperson is not in danger of losing his job or anything quite so severe, the VP was nevertheless concerned and asked me what I recommended.

I said, "Let's get him on the phone and ask him." After a few minutes of talking to the salesperson I asked, "How much news do you watch on TV?"- to which he responded, "...maybe three to four hours every night."

Upon hearing this, both the problem and a clear solution became very obvious to me. I said, "Stop watching the news!" The salesperson was becoming depressed from watching the news and the continuous negative stimulus from all those doom and gloom pundits on TV. He was becoming addicted to the negative feedback and it was affecting his outlook on life, business, etc.

I am not a psychologist, but if there is one thing I do know about salespeople - Optimism is essential! We do not have the luxury of ever being down. Salespeople need to be the eternal optimist to survive the ups and downs that are part of the business and sales cycles. It doesn't do us any good to subject ourselves to negativity or worry about things we have no control over.

To all the ‘optimistic' salespeople out there - Good Selling!

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