Attitudes of Success: Five Pillars

Attitude determines your destiny, quality of life, and sales success. The quality of your attitude affects the quality of your life. These are profound statements but true. The proficiencies of today's sales arena go far beyond selling skills. Attitude is one of these proficiencies. Without it, all other skills are handicapped. Attitude is what drives the practice of skills. Attitude has such a compelling influence on selling that this book would be incomplete without a discussion on the five attitudinal characteristics of success. Extensive product knowledge alone affords you little advantage if your attitude is one of indifference or if you lack belief in yourself.

The objectives of this chapter are to share with you the significant role attitude plays in your success and to examine the human aspect of business. This book integrates the human side of business with specifics of professional selling. The two cannot work in isolation. As you develop your sales career, you will be inundated with product knowledge, company policies and procedures, price manuals, and other tools of the trade. People often lose sight of the human side of selling. Why does the sales profession complicate such a fundamental process? We put on our business attire Monday morning, then proceed to divorce ourselves from the human aspect of selling. We become robo-reps guided by a mechanical process. Through a positive attitude, you can refocus and develop a humanized approach with your customers.

A positive attitude will convert an average sales professional into a top performer. It empowers you to achieve new levels of success both personally and professionally. Winners choose to nurture and develop a positive, winning attitude. They understand the importance of a winning edge and use it to differentiate themselves in their own personal life and with their customers. Attitude provides that edge. People prefer to deal with winners.

One of the simplest and best definitions of attitude comes from Elwood Chapman's book, Life Is an Attitude! He suggests that, "Attitude is the way you mentally look at the world around you. It is how you view your environment and your future." I agree. Your field of perception and how you view your environment largely determines your attitude. Is the glass half full or half empty? While looking outside, do you see the beautiful view or do you see the dirty window? Is it a partly cloudy day or a partly sunny day? It's up to you. Who wants to do business with a grump? (Maybe other grumps). Be aware that your nonverbal communication sends a very clear message about your attitude. It comes through loud and clear as either negative, indifferent, or positive. Two of these outcomes are bad. You need to believe that what you mentally dwell upon significantly determines your attitude. If you look for the good, you find it: If you look for the negative, there's plenty of that around too. You are what you think.

In examining the traits of top-achieving sales professionals, it becomes evident that it is not their product knowledge and selling abilities alone that set them apart. Their habits and patterns of behavior reflect certain attitudes

One of the challenges associated with maintaining a positive attitude is this little tidbit: Psychologists estimate that up to 77% of what we hear and see throughout our day is negative. We often experience "mental negative drift," allowing the negative to dominate our thoughts. Take a moment and think about a typical day. How are you feeling by 10PM? It takes conscious effort and energy to remain positive and energized throughout the day. I find it interesting that when asked, "How are things?" or "How are you doing today?" many people respond by saying, "Oh, not too bad." Not too bad? Do you mean that most of the time you are bad, but today you're not too bad? Interesting. Tell people you are having a great day. It's okay, you're allowed to have a great day. Once again, it's attitude.

Next you have to read Attitudes of Top Achievers