Sometimes you just have to STOP!!!

On more than one occasion, I have written about the power of keeping a positive mental attitude and a smile. A belief that your customers will say ‘yes’ to you affects your body language and your tone. Your confidence grows and the day just seems to flow perfectly.

Isn’t it wonderful that every day can be just like that?

OH NO IT CAN’T!

Of course it can’t. Some days, no matter how much of a smile you wear and a friendly approach you take with every call, some people just want to grind you down. It’s easy to dust off a simple objection – after all, we’re all grown ups and as professional sales people, we’ve learned not to take it personally.

Trouble is, we don’t spend every single call simply selling. We have to speak with suppliers who tell us that our orders are going to be late. We have to speak with customers who are pulling their hair out because they ordered 2000 units and only 1999 have shown up. We, all of us, will have days where the word frazzled just doesn’t even begin to cut it, and try as we might to hold on to cheerful grin and a pleasant outlook, it really can be a bit of a struggle.

It’s in times like these that picking up the phone and ploughing through a few more cold calls is, quite possibly, the worst decision you can make. Well no, to be fair the worst decision you can make is to storm into your bosses’ office and tell him just where he can shove his job. Poor bloke. It’s not his fault you’re having a bad day. Unless it is of course, but that’s a whole other story.

Calling potential customers from under a cloud is a waste of time. Your tone will be negative, and your objective will merely be to make calls so that you can say that you tried. Except that you won’t try. You won’t ask powerful questions, you won’t really listen to their responses and you’ll only give them about 10% of your attention at best. What a waste of time.

The best thing you can do when the world appears to be turning its spears on you is just stop. Go for a walk, go and have a cup of tea, go and ask a colleague if you can take a few minutes of their time to talk through some problems that you’re having. Whatever it is, for goodness’ sake don’t bottle it in and then take it out on the next potential customer.

You may not be obviously rude or dismissive to them, but you can bet that they will not feel any warmth from you. They won’t feel as if you’re delighted to be given the chance to work with them, and of course, they’ll take their business to someone who will.

It’s important to remember that everyone has bad days, but the keyword there is DAYS. How often have you had a good day and then immediately thought that it was so much better than yesterday? Exactly. Problems will rise and fall, but if you deal with them, ask for help and keep your emotions in check, things will balance out and you can look forward to your next really good day.

I hope that reading this blog will be the start of yours.