 I was asked this today: “Ever feel like you’ve lost your sales mojo? What do you do to get it back?”
This question was asked today on a group and I just have to show you some of the answers 🙂 BTW this is why never to ask other sales people for advice.
OK here it is:
-Get laid.
-Go drive through an expensive neighborhood, watch Billions, watch Wolf of Wall Street
–Prospect like crazy
-Make a list of your obligations and consequences if you dont deliver.
-Outwork everybody. Remember you’re the shit. Then work some more
-You must immerse yourself in greatness. YouTube motivational speeches
-Get in your car, drive to your appts with some of your favorite music on, loud. Turn it off a couple of blocks before you get there. Tell yourself it’s “Showtime”!
– I get mine back by asking myself- Do I really want to be broke?? I have a fear of being broke!
So here we have it. Push harder. Scare the crap out of yourself. Boost your mood by doing mood boosting stuff. That about covers it.
The problem is that none of that stuff works long term. It is like putting a candy coating on a turd…. yes I said turd get over it 🙂 It is still a turd.
So why does this happen?
It happens because your attitude is polluting your mindset. No matter how much you try to overpower it that attitude will always be there. You’ll be in an internal battle with peaks and valleys for your entire career. I’m not just talking about sales. I’m talking about any career.
It’s not that you lost your mojo. The real problem is you never had it. What has happened is all the things that you were using to overpower your attitude have worn off. The reason for that is simple. It takes a lot of energy to overpower a problem. The problem takes no energy to continue existing. Eventually it doesn’t matter what you do to try to boost yourself up. It will eventually wear off. This is the downside of what some people call “motivation”.
What is the answer?
The first step is to actually really and honestly discover what your attitude is. Most people are not very honest with themselves. When you ask them about their attitude they give the answers that they think should be there and not how they really feel.
Let me give you an example.
In this case I will use two types of people.
The first person does anything they can to avoid feeling bad. They over prepare in order to be able to make certain that they will have all the answers that someone needs. Their focus is on what they don’t know and what they can’t do. They designed their lives to be able to avoid anything that they think they might fail at. These people tend to procrastinate and make excuses for not doing the things today that they need to do. There is always one more thing they have to do before they proceed. They also tend to focus on what they’re good at. They spend more time on things that they are already good at rather than trying to improve the things that they suck at.
A second person doesn’t like to feel bad but understands that it’s a normal part of doing things. They realize that sometimes they will win and sometimes they will lose. When they lose they simply move on to the next thing they have to do. They are disappointed and may have all the same feelings that the first person has about failure. The difference is they accept it as a normal part of life. These kinds of people fail and lose on a regular basis. They also are very quick to realize what they did wrong when they lose. They tend to take responsibility for it and then take action to do better the next time. Most importantly they keep moving.
As you can see the first person is continually going in circles doing the same things they are good at avoiding anything that causes them discomfort.
The second person is moving in a straight line collecting failures and learning the lessons of those failures.
Even if the second person is moving incredibly slowly they will make more progress than the person moving in circles.
Every time I see someone talk about losing the motivation for their “mojo”, I know they are the first kind of person.
I know the big question going through your mind right now. How can someone change from the first kind of person into the second kind of person?
What we did is we came up with what we call the FAIL process.
Step one-Fear…think about something you recently failed at or avoided doing because you are afraid to fail.
Step two-Admit…own it. Admit to yourself that you actually did fail without any excuses for reservations whatsoever. Admit to yourself you avoided doing something because you are afraid of failing. If you can’t admit to yourself that you didn’t fail then there is very little chance that you will make progress.
Step three-Inventory. Take inventory of what actually did the work and what you would do again. If you’re avoiding things one of the things that you would look forward to if you did it.
Then take inventory about what didn’t work. Without any excuses and being 100% brutally honest with yourself make a list of the things that did not go well.
Step four. Learning…Apply what you have learned. Of the things that you didn’t right what could you do to improve them? Think about how you could refine those processes so that they were more efficient or how you could use them in other contexts. Always give yourself credit for what you did right.
Of the things that you did not do so well, what would you have to learn in order to do them better? Where would you go to learn these things? How do you think knowing that would change the outcome? Who do you know that can help you?
The F Word.. how to fail and win!
Fear Admit Inventory Learning
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