In this chapter of AYCDIAYCD Art addresses another topic that he masters. He says, “You can do 99% of the things right but not possess a positive winning attitude, and you will fail. A positive attitude is not for sale, you can’t inherit it, nobody can give it to you, and you can’t go to college and get it.”
This thing called a positive winning attitude is the chief weapon you have for combating the failure messages that are continually flashed your way. The difference between being great and being average and ordinary is so small that it’s almost too scary to talk about. So a PWA is one of those “little edges” that can make the difference between winning and losing.
I (Doug) would like to tell you about a guy on the west coast of Florida that went to work as a location manager for a service company after losing his job as a construction company VP during the great recession. After completing his on-boarding training he was installed as the manager of a branch in one of the hardest hit areas of the country, according to USA Today. That branch ranked 7th out of 8 in technician sales in his region, with only minimum effort devoted to that area.
This manager began to build a little pride by buying new uniforms for his folks and putting a fresh coat of paint on the building. He showed them a picture of what winning is supposed to look like and encouraged and incentivized them. Less than two years later that branch was selling 5 times the dollar amount they were when he took over, and the #1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 top selling techs in the region are from that branch. John in Ft.Myers knows the unwritten law: For things to get better, you must get better.
When John made the conscious decision to change the tradition there and build a sales culture, things began to happen. Those Techs wanted to believe they were special, but they needed somebody to believe in them.
Art tells us that there are four fundamentals in developing and maintaining a winning attitude:
Always be excited
Stop making excuses
Always be “up”
Make a total commitment
1. Always be excited – There is no trick to winning; it’s just an everyday all-the-time thing, an attitude. More than 90% of having a positive attitude is being excited. It’s easy to be excited when things are going great and difficult when things are going poorly. But if you want to win you have to get excited and stay that way; regardless. You must deal with negatives and just go on, and when you do you will start to become a success.
Art says, “More than 90% of winning is being excited, especially when you don’t feel like being excited.”
Nobody can motivate you but you. Too many salespeople fail in their job waiting for somebody to motivate them. “You can’t control the winds, but you can adjust your sails”.
2. Stop making excuses – An important part of a positive attitude is refusing to accept a reason not to do it. You must avoid negatives, but must also pursue positives, as well.
Several years ago I (Doug) had conversations with two solid performing sales reps that both relocated to new areas with the company where I conducted sales coaching. One told me how great things were in her new area, and that if she’d known how lucrative it was she would have moved there a year earlier, calling it the “promised land”. The other one was struggling and spent his time telling me how “different” the people were in his area and how hard it was to convince them to buy from his company. Now, I wouldn’t embarrass either one of these folks, as both are great sales people, but “it’s the man and not the land”, and always will be. People are people everywhere across the country.
“Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.”
3. Always be “up” – Although everybody gets down and discouraged, you must make a decision to always be “up” about everything and everybody. It’s always easier to be negative than positive, because worrying is a part of human nature. You can beat it, but you must work at it, and you must also realize that most of the things you worry about never happen. There are two things you can do that will help you accomplish this objective:
Don’t let the criticizers and complainers change you and influence you to give up. Insulate yourself from these folks and don’t give them permission to dump on you. Pass negatives up and positives down. When disappointment and frustration comes your way, tell your manager. He or she is better equipped to handle it than your peers. Once you stick your sword in the sand and establish this pattern, you will also hear less negative chatter from your peers.
4. Make a total commitment – If you’re committed to win, you have a completely different outlook, and your only recourse is to turn negatives into positives. A wise man once said, “If you have something to fall back on, you are guaranteed to fall back.” As reckless as it may sound, once you burn your bridges, your subconscious will find a way to help you succeed, and you will be on your road to winning.
Art leaves us with one of his famous quotes, “Attitude isn’t just a little thing; it’s everything.”
Leave a comment and Speak Your Mind about a past attitude adjustment that helped make a difference in your life, and what happened as a result of that change.
©2013 Robinson Training Solutions, LLC
