The Perfect Mindset For Sales (From Eastern Philosophy)
If you’ve worked in sales for more than a couple of days, you’ve likely heard this word … mindset.
If you’re new to sales, you’ll be ahead of the curve if you can get your mindset right before your first day in a sales role.
There are ups and downs in sales. ⬆️⬇️
One week it might feel like every prospect you call turns into a closed deal. Old prospects are coming out of the woodwork and new prospects are flooding into your pipeline. You’re riding an emotional high and dreaming of a big commission check.
And then, the very next week, nobody will answer your calls. Deals that you were 100% confident would close will end up ghosting you. Even your mom won’t return your missed calls. You might even start to doubt your abilities as a salesperson.
This undulation is natural in sales.
Sales growth over time never happens in a perfectly straight line. As a salesperson, you can’t control the ups and downs, no matter how good you are.
But you can control your mindset.
And it’s your mindset that will determine the impact that the ups and downs have on your sales performance and your emotional state.
Don’t ride the emotional roller coaster.
If you ride the emotional roller coaster, you’re bound to fly off the rails at some point.
This is especially common for sales reps early on in their careers.
In my experience as a sales manager, I’ve watched my reps succeed and fail on the phone.
Reps fist-pumping and jumping around when they’ve just closed the biggest sale of their career. Reps crying and worrying about getting fired when they haven’t closed a deal for a few days.
One specific part of a salesperson’s day-to-day that is almost always emotionally charged is right when a deal is about to close. Naturally, the salesperson will get excited and hopeful, especially if it’s a big deal. And then there are two possible outcomes …
1. The deal closes – the salesperson gets a hit of dopamine from the fulfillment of their excitement and hope.
2. The deal doesn’t close – the salesperson loses their excitement, and might even get upset, because their hope is unfulfilled.
Why is this a problematic emotional strategy? Because there are always deals that won’t close.
Nobody goes undefeated. Even the best salesperson will lose a deal every now and then.
If your emotions are invested in the outcome of every sales encounter, then you might experience negative emotions when a deal is lost, which can be problematic in the day-to-day of a sales job when your success depends on your ability to stay positive.
Desireless action: a perspective from Eastern philosophy.
The concept of desireless action can be summed up in this passage from the Bhagavad Gita:
“You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.”
It basically means: you can always control the work you put in, but you can’t always control the outcome. This is because there are other factors at play.
Your prospect might be having a bad day. Another salesperson at a competing company might steal your prospect’s business. Your customer success team might fumble the onboarding process and lose the deal.
There is no use worrying. There are innumerable things that could go wrong, and it’s not possible to prepare for all of them. What is possible and within our control is to focus on our prescribed duties and perform them to the best of our abilities.
This is a freeing mindset for salespeople because it allows them to stop worrying about deals that don’t close so that they can focus their energies on productive work, like calling more prospects.
Conclusion
There is work to be done. There are rules to follow. There is a way to succeed.
Emotions about possible outcomes will not help.
Do your work without expectation. Enjoy the process itself like a game. This will lead to consistent and long-term progress without emotional highs and lows.
Click here to read more about how to maintain a positive attitude in sales.