Trouble Scaling YOUR Business?

Trouble Scaling YOUR Business?

Rosalind Henderson is the owner of Leadership Keys Unlimited. A Leadership and Sales Coach for 13 years, she has worked with such organizations as Chick-fil-A, UPS, Chambers of Commerces, Inglewood School District, and universities. Rosalind currently works with entrepreneurs who hate sales but want to enjoy a consistent income.

Rosalind Henderson

Trouble Scaling YOUR Business?
Transform your Mindset!

Do you find yourself stuck? Has your income plateaued?

No matter what you do you are unable to breakthrough to the next level?

Have you been tinkering with other aspects of your business, such branding, new marketing strategies or hiring yet another coach, but you still aren’t hitting your income goals?

Perhaps it’s time to look at your mindset.

You can have all the strategies, scripts, access to best practices or a perfected sales system, but if negative feelings and thoughts or beliefs are left unmanaged, then your skills become less usable.

Sometimes, it is a hard pill to swallow to step back to observe areas in your sales pipeline that need attention. But any part of your sales process can be impacted by your beliefs.

For example, I have worked with clients who struggle with sales. They resist it. Instead, you can find them focused on other areas of their business—answering emails and phone calls, polishing social media posts, attending networking events or registering for courses, thinking this will fix their income issue.

But the truth is you have lost thousands of dollars because of your inner conflict with selling. The longer you let this dynamic hang around the bigger the financial cost, agony, and ebbing motivation.

Dig deeper, often, usually unconscious to the seller, are limited beliefs about selling. So many of us have had past encounters with the cigar smoking, arm twisting, unethical salesperson who has sold something to us we may not have even wanted.

Memories of this has left a bad taste in lots of people’s mouths. Who wants a part of that? Hence, the resistance to sales.

Any limited belief left to fester will undercut your full potential as an entrepreneur.

Here are a few areas where I have seen limited beliefs show up and impact your ability to sell:

• Undercharging
• Sales slumps
• Generating leads
• The inability to convert prospects into clients
• Personalizing a NO from a prospect
What can you do to manage your mindset so you can focus and breakthrough financial plateaus?

It sounds simple. However, your first step in changing is awareness. Dr. Bruce Lipton, an American biologist, believes 95% of our time is spent on autopilot. We go through the motions of life and spend just 5% awake to our surroundings. That is mind-blowing!

But with intentionality, you can begin to observe areas of your sales system, and notice where you work your magic and where mindset issues may interfere with your sales performance.

Because many of us have blind spots, it’s worth asking another salesperson who is great at feedback to take notes as he/she observes you in a sales conversation. Doing this several times in a row will allow your evaluator to detect areas which needs improvement.

You might benefit from additional techniques to handle a prospect’s objections, strategies to help you charge appropriately, or tools to pick up the energy in your presentation. At base, some of these dynamics may have limited beliefs as a cause.

When applicable, use the exercise I will introduce you to to train your mind, emotions and transform limited beliefs, so they become allies in your sales performance.

Mindset as a Responsibility
It is our responsibility to mind our mindset. However, this is an uncommon practice. Yet, the ability to intervene early in our thought and emotional life allows for containing negativity and dissolving it.

When your mind is not harboring intense emotions, it is free to think, problem solve, see options, and make better decisions.

Have you ever acted out of intense anger? Have you said something harsh, wishing you could take it back but couldn’t? Your remarks may have even damaged your relationship. Temporarily you were under the influence of anger and reacted in a way you later regretted.

Instead, the goal is to manage emotions so you can protect relationships, build resilience, problem solve and be in greater control over your attitude and behaviors. This lends itself to performing on higher levels.

Take responsibility for the quality of your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.

The Thinking Cycle
Before I share the exercise, which will help you manage emotions and negative thoughts, let us learn about the Thinking Cycle. (See below)

Did you know the average person has up to 50,000 thoughts coursing through their minds each day?

Are your thoughts advancing you towards your goals, or are they slowing your progress?

Become aware of how thoughts cycle.

For example, a recurring thought immediately releases chemicals such as, serotonin, dopamine, or adrenaline. A fearful emotion excretes stress hormones, and you might feel a need to fight, run or freeze.

This explains why someone, fearful of sales, find themselves resisting it. Let the negative feelings hang around without intervention, then it begins to energetically deepens its impact on your emotions, and thoughts.

At this point, anxiety heighten your awareness of how it is impacting other areas–your heart beats out of your chest, your sweaty palms shake, and/or you sense an expansive dread.

Emotions can become quite intense, affecting your attitude (insecure, self-doubt, self-consciousness). Eventually, it will undoubtedly influence your behavior.

When fear floods our thinking, we do irrational things. Perhaps you cancel a sales presentation,or get behind in generating leads. Allowing negative emotions and thoughts can cost you.

Remember, it is our job to regulate our emotions so we can perform steadily to hit our sales goals.

The key is to act immediately. To intervene at step one or two (see the diagram) is a preventative measure you can use to lessen the intensity of emotions and clear negative thinking.

To intervene, use this ABCC exercise to challenge the thoughts and beliefs that stifle your sales performance. A-Adverse, B=belief, C=Consequences, C=Counter with Reality. The tool I am sharing is taken from the world of Cognitive Psychology which asserts the more you upgrade your mind, the more you find your behavior helping you reach your goals.

This exercise is deceptively simple, and at first you may see it as tedious as you implement it. But this tool is an investment in yourself, and it pays big dividends. You’ll use it less as you begin to discipline your emotions, beliefs, and thoughts.

Once the frequency and intensity of your feelings and negative thoughts wane, the more in charge you are of your analytical mind. This is a place of empowerment. It results in more energy, positivity, and focus needed to close more business.

I ask my clients to carry a little notebook around with them. So, the next time you are triggered, and experience very intense or frequent negative emotions related to sales, use this tool to test the legitimacy of your negative thoughts.

Write down the troubling situation in your notebook.

For instance, Tom is new to sales, hearing a NO from a prospect feels like personal rejection. In fact, he is close to throwing in the towel. His self-talk reinforces his feelings of rejection, “I’m not good at sales and I’ll never be. I hate this.”

Tom has created four columns in his notebook: He writes:

Under Adversity: A NO feel like rejection. It’s hard to keep running sales calls.

Under Beliefs: I belief I don’t have the skills to sell. It is too painful, and yet if I don’t get this job mastered my family will regret it.

Under Consequences: I’ve been so worried about keeping this position I am not sleeping; I worry all the time. I am not spending quality time with my kids or wife. I’m dealing with frequent migraines.

Under Counter with Reality: Well, the truth is I’ve been doing this sales job for three months, so what do I expect? I need to be less critical towards myself.

What can I do get the training I need to be more successful?

How can I get over this sense of rejection, and get tougher skin?

Oh, I can ask Joe to mentor me. He’s great at sales.

I can read books or get a sales coach to help me meet my quota.

Let’s unpack the exercise. When you use your notebook divide it into four parts. Under adversity, succinctly write about the issue that triggers you. For Tom, it was his strong feelings of rejection when a prospect was not interested the product.

Under Beliefs. write down the beliefs that undergird the adverse situation. What do you REALLY believe about yourself, skills, or situation? The more honest you are the more this exercise will benefit you.

Under Consequences. There is always a price to pay when you harbor limited beliefs and negative thoughts and feelings within. Write what you observe.
For Tom, his physical health was impacted. He had migraines and quite a few sleepless nights. His relationship with his kids and wife was being affected by worry and his brutal self-talk.

Under Counter with Reality. This is the part of the exercise that is sweetly powerful. I want you to prove to yourself the thing your self-talk, negative emotions and thoughts are suggesting to you are accurate.

Tom is ready to throw in the towel. Sales appears to difficult for him, and he doesn’t feel his skills can get any better. Now, it may be true that he might not be a top-notch salesperson, BUT he has not reached out to resources to help him better his selling skills. He realizes he needs to find support and give himself ample time before he can evaluate his sales skills correctly.

You will find as you use this exercise that writing your thoughts in your notebook makes them concrete, easier to work with.

As you work this exercise, many of my clients have reported, that if, for instance, their anger on a scale from 0-10 (ten being the most intense) is an 8, after doing the exercise the intensity of the emotions wane and become a 4 or 5.

This is important because the dissolution of intense emotions gives you access to your rational brain. The ability to see options and possibilities improve because strong feelings and negative thoughts have subsided.

Consistently use this tool as you see fit. This exercise can help you train your emotions and your thought patterns, so they become allies to your success.

This tool is great for business and for your life.

Summary
If you are working hard but find you’re unable to breakthrough to make more income, if working on branding, marketing and other business tactics does not net your desired income, then consider evaluating your mindset. Transforming limited beliefs, can shift emotions and thinking patterns that can unblock how you do sales, so you are released to enjoy a consistent income.

About Rosalind
Rosalind Henderson is the owner of Leadership Keys Unlimited. A Leadership and Sales Coach for 13 years, she has worked with such organizations as Chick-fil-A, UPS, Chambers of Commerces, Inglewood School District, and universities. Rosalind currently works with entrepreneurs who hate sales but want to enjoy a consistent income. Her 6-month program transforms sales-resistant business owners into confident, powerful, and effective ones.

When Rosalind isn’t working, you will find her on the floor with her grandson playing with Legos.

Are you ready to grow your sales skills so you are making a consistent income? Get complimentary tips, practical training and support. Join our Facebook group: Resistant Entrepreneurs Building a Consistent Income TODAY!

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All rights reserved © 2021 by Rosalind Henderson All rights reserved. No part of this essay may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from Rosalind Henderson, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

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