Your mind is constantly working, with or without your permission. It’s constantly filling your conscious and subconscious with stories about the world around you. And those stories, unfortunately, are often both fictional and harmful. When told consistently, those fictional stories become leashes that hinder your growth and limit your performance.
It’s just a truth that salespeople with fewer external stories around prospects and their circumstances will have fewer leashes, carry fewer assumptions, and have a stronger ability to achieve. So your goal as a sales warrior is to develop what I call your “story filter.” This is a cultivated ability to get rid of the stories about your circumstances that hold you back, and only internalize the stories you know to be true or beneficial. And that means constantly asking yourself these three questions on a daily basis.
1. Is this story true? If so, how do I know?
2. Is this story beneficial to me?
3. How can I use this story in a positive way?
Imagine you’re at work, and your coach is short with you all day. You ask questions and you get short replies. You’re filling up your coffee cup in the break room and you get a cold shoulder. The story you tell yourself in that moment is that your boss is mad at you, that you’ve done something wrong, and if you allow the story to go to its furthest extreme, that your employment status is up in the air.
These are stories you’ve told yourself. They’re fictitious, and they create a defensive, anxious posture. In reality, your coach is just as likely to have just gotten bad news that morning. It more than likely has nothing to do with you. This is where communication is key. Before you create a story about something, you must verify its truth before you manifest it as your own reality. Otherwise you’re filling your head with performance-destroying illusions.
In the bestselling book, A Course in Miracles, it says, “whenever you become defensive about anything, know that you have identified with an illusion.”
That’s what happens when we tell ourselves stories about the world around us. And sales warriors know that one of the keys to becoming unleashed is to liberate yourself from those debilitating stories.
The stories salespeople tell themselves about prospects, the economy, the competition, their product, and the price vary, but they’re rarely true. If a prospect has their arms crossed, the story might read, “They’re not happy with me or my product, I need to back off.” The problem is, you don’t know that to be true, which becomes a huge problem when you base your entire selling message off of it.
There’s no question these stories come from somewhere. But they rarely spring from the root cause of what the true story actually is. It may feel like your boss is purposely neglecting you, but they might just not have the resources to know how to handle your problem. It may feel like your prospects don’t want to be asked to purchase on the first conversation, but that may indicate your own discomfort more than anything else.
The bottom line is that the stories we tell ourselves about our circumstances leash our behaviors. If you’ve internalized a story, it can be difficult to get rid of without the proper tools.
Your tendency to tell yourself success-crippling stories is an important leash to reverse, because it feeds entirely off illusion. And the story has to be fought the moment it arrives. Otherwise it implants itself into your consciousness and becomes part of your assumed reality.
So, your goal is to become conscious of the stories your brain feeds you. Take control of the process.
Traditional Sales And Leadership Training Fails To Address The Real Problem!
You’ve tried training your team in the past, but it didn’t really work. The old style of training just doesn’t seem to work anymore. It’s no secret that sales and leadership training is essential, but it can be hard to find a training program that actually works. Most programs are outdated and are not focused on changing behavior.
FPG Sales Training is different. We don’t use the traditional approach of lecturing your team for hours on end. Instead, we help your team understand their mindset and give them the tools they need to succeed. We help them remove their excuses so they can finally achieve their goals. Book a Meeting today!
Mary Marshall Forrest
Mary has been an instrumental leader in shaping and helping FPG grow into an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for the last three consecutive years. She has been intimately involved in developing FPG’s Stevie Award-winning sales, customer service, and leadership programs, and she speaks at dozens of events each year on FPG’s unique behavioral change training model. Mary’s sales background and deep history training new home sales professionals specifically means she’s able to lend expertise in the most tactical way possible. Mary is a trainer to the trainers, a sales warrior, and a developer of game-changing brand strategy.
