9 steps for reframing negative thoughts & maintaining motivation to sell.
You started the year with gusto. You were wanted by your customers, envied by your competitors, applauded by your leaders. The momentum of sales filled your quota with an uncanny synchronicity to the seasonal budget demands set by the mothership. It was meant to be. Last year you missed your target by a whisker. Now the work was paying off. This was going to be your year.
Then as fast as a Wintry cool change engulfs the warmth of a sun drenched Autumn afternoon, something shifted. The phone becomes quiet. The numbers slow. It’s as though the universe had applied the brakes to your success.
Suddenly, the competition is louder. The customers, wooed, are distracted. You find your brain swept up in a sea of paranoid emotion wondering,
“What have I done wrong? I’m not good enough.”
No one will dispute sales is an emotional rollercoaster. When business is up, you fly high on adrenalin. When business is down, you feel like someone has poured concrete in your boots & shoved your confidence through a meat mincer.
Swarms of irrational thoughts roam your mind as it struggles to make sense of the situation. Whether the thoughts are fact or fiction doesn’t matter. All it wants is to find an escape hatch to relieve the pressure.
Negative ruminations distract our focus & drain our energy. Reeling us in, they jolt us back into the past or catapult us into the future, determined to keep our mind from feeling settled in the present. Like a hyperactive toddler, they are fuelled by the attention we give them & are unapologetically intent on getting their own way.
Successful sales professionals know how to manage the emotions that arrive with sales cycle fluctuations.
They understand the importance of preserving their emotional energy & have strategies to decrease self-sabotage from crippling rumination.
Negative thoughts need to be nipped in the bud before they whip our minds into a fictional fairy tale.
Where do we start?
I love this snippet from Dr Jodie Lowinger’s new book “The Mind Strength Method”
Thoughts are just sentences
Sentences are just words
Words are just letters
Letters are just shapes
What makes us give “shapes” permission to hijack our minds?
I used to accept negative thoughts as a way of life, not understanding that putting up with the mental anguish was a choice I was making.
Rather than rationalise my thinking, I chose to bury the thoughts & strategise my way out of the mental chaos they inflicted. I learnt the hard way that this wasn’t sustainable.
With time I began to fear their presence because I hadn’t taken the time to understand that my thoughts weren’t me. The price was crippling anxiety.
Upon reflection, I’ve thought long & hard about how to manage these thoughts & to redirect their energy into paving a new action plan forward. Especially as it relates to the sales profession.
The process here works for me. It reminds me that I am not my thoughts, while lowering their volume & directing my focus to what is in my control.
Here is my process with a working example you might identify with, good old imposter syndrome:
Working example; “My loyal customer has randomly used a competitor product. After all of my hard work, it hurts. “I’m not good enough” is taking over my thoughts, pre-occupying my brain. How do I make it stop infiltrating the rest of my business?”
1. Create a dedicated space
Buy a journal you can dedicate to reframing negative thoughts. Choose something you like, different from anything else you own.
2. Create a visual distinction
Turn to a blank page & draw a line down the centre. Label the column on left “Negative thought”, the column on the right “Positive path forward”
3. Find the “eye of the storm”
When a storm of negative thoughts whips up & overwhelms you, take a mindful moment to identify the dominant thought the noise is telling you, the loudest voice at the heart of the matter. I call it “the eye of the storm”.
4. Evacuate your brain
Write your negative thought down in the left column. I find writing the words powerful. Not only does it remove them from my brain, it also removes their meaning. All they become are words on a page. Shapes.
5. Take a Snapshot
Take an objective polaroid of the preoccupying situation that started the thought storm & describe it using only the facts. Try to consciously reserve judgement & assumption. Initially, it can be tricky. A trusted partner can be a helpful objective eye.
6. Get curious about the Snapshot
You can choose your preferred questions. I like to ask myself:
What are my default assumptions that need clarifying?
Was this behaviour change within my control?
How would my customer describe me today vs before the negative thoughts?
7. Reframe your negative thought with facts
Write those facts in the right column.
Working example: there is nothing I have done to justify the thought that I’m not good enough. This behaviour was out of my control. In my customer’s eyes, I am the same person.
8. Create your positive action
Write your positive action in the right column.
Working example: I will use this as an opportunity to better understand my customer’s decision making & see if what I learn gives cause to course correct our collaborative working plan.
9. Self-preservation
After reframing a negative thought, I like to invest in a little compassionate self-preservation to keep me inspired & focused on the part of the customer process I can control. I ask myself the below questions:
What am I most proud of in this professional chapter?
What have I learnt from this particular situation?
Where am I leading my customer?
What is my next step towards this vision?
What investment can I make today in my personal growth that will inspire me in this moment?
Negative thoughts during the sales cycle are not only a reality of the profession, they’re a reality of life. How well we manage them determining how easily derailed we become by their presence.
I like using a journal as it allows me to reflect back, look for patterns & acknowledge myself for how far I’ve come.
For the working example provided, a management plan can be the difference between a measured response & a panicked emotional reaction - in the eyes of the customer. A self motivated & disengaged team member - in the eyes of a leader. A person who values themselves & a person who carries the burden of blame - in the heart of the human.
I’d love to hear what works for you or, if you find this useful next time you are overwhelmed by a negative thought storm!
Peta x
Coach, Commercial Growth Consultant, Speaker
Author of My Beautiful Mess - Living through burnout & rediscovering me. The professional & life stories from my Sales career that taught me the lessons inspiring blogs like this.
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