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ourselves with our words, whether consciously or unconsciously, try taking advantage of this power by using your mind to program positive mental traits that will help rather than hinder you.
3) BAD MENTAL HABITS The third roadblock to concentration is bad mental habits. Some salespeo- ple mentally justify putting aside what needs to be done now. Look both at how you do things now and at the way you’ve dealt with sales situations that turned out unsuccessfully in the past. You may find a negative pattern. Sometimes we get into negative daily
routines we find ways to justify. Concen- tration often deteriorates when we get distracted by these routines. We get the “easy stuff” done so we can con- vince ourselves we have accomplished something. If you see yourself doing this, mentally prepare yourself to con- quer these patterns – plan and prioritize tasks so what needs to be done will be done when it should be. Positive Incentivizing: Mental interruptions can be turned aside by using positive incentives on yourself. If you are tired, if you will be dealing with someone you do not like, or if you have worries or physical prob- lems (a headache, for example), try this: Pause and review the situation mentally, with your eyes closed, and identify the problem; then, promise yourself some positive incentive if the obstacle will stop bothering you.
SELLING TIP Presentation Prep
The quality of your preparation affects the quality of your performance. Use these tips to organize your ideas and information for more thoughtfully prepared presentations. • Collect ideas. On a piece of paper, write the purpose of your presentation. Add three to five main points that support your purpose. Next, list all the ideas, considerations, and evidence that relate to each point, then prioritize and evaluate that information. Determine how well each item supports your purpose, contributes to your message, and affects your audience.
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Mentally tell yourself what good thing you will do for yourself – a hot tub, a day off, a night out – if your mind will not let these interruptions get to you. Just one thing: Always honor these promises or your mind and body will ignore future promises for good behavior.
MAINTAINING CONCENTRATION Here are a few other mental tech- niques to maintain concentration on your customers and their needs. Visualization and Projection: Our successes and our failures come equally from our thoughts, mental pic- tures, and attitudes. If we think, see, believe, and feel we will be successful at something, we will be! If we think, see, believe, or feel doubtful about it, we won’t be! Before each sales situation, stop and close your eyes, seeing it in your mind as if it were a movie or series of pictures. Visualize it ending with the results you want – a sale, a problem resolved, an objection overcome, a question answered, a happy custom- er, or a signed contract. We call this method “projecting.” We project the thoughts of the pictured success out and away from us, allowing them to come true in reality. One Step at a Time: Many sales situations are small campaigns of several steps, so it always is a good idea to plan ahead and anticipate that might happen. Keep your mind
on each step; after all, why worry about Step 12 when Step 1 is still in the works? Planning ahead is fine, but sometimes an early step might turn out differently from what you’d anticipated. Later ones may have to be changed, as well. Focus on one at a time to make sure each comes out with the desired result, or the next step might never happen!
POSITIVE ATTITUDES ABOUT YOUR WORK
Good concentration is easier when you feel really motivated and excited about what you are doing. Mentally tell yourself often that you are offering the best product or service in the world and that there are meaningful reasons for you to be selling it. The service you are performing for the benefit of oth- ers and the need you are filling are far more satisfying and exciting reasons for selling than to just “make a buck” or “put food on the table.” Mentally convincing yourself – through visualiza- tion and repetition – of the excitement of the job produces the attitude that makes concentration (and success) much easier. We can help concentration by re- moving the barriers of stress, interrup- tions, and bad mental habits. Use the techniques outlined here and see for yourself that mind power can give you the concentration you need at any time and in any place to improve your selling power.
• Conduct research. Effective, thorough research includes fact finding for both presentation content and audience expectations. Make sure your information sources are reliable and accurate and that the evidence you find supports your selling position. The more you can find out about your buyers’ values, principles, as- sumptions, and motivations, the more persuasive you can make your presentation. • Refine your ideas. All the information and ideas you’ve collected provide the raw material you can use to draw conclusions that convince prospects to buy from you. Be selective about what you share, and include only the most pertinent and persuasive material in your presentation. – SELLING POWER EDITORS
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