Sales Motivation is Leveraged in Your Beliefs

You can read this article as information of apply the exercise. If you don't now it already, your beliefs are making or breaking your sales and marketing efforts.
By Rene Zamora - www.salesmanagernow.com

Brian Tracey, Speaker and Author, says, "Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality."

If you have been applying High Payoff Activities or other successful marketing practices and your results are lacking, your beliefs might be holding you back.  If you are closing small or medium-size engagements and don't understand why you have not found bigger deals, it could be due to your beliefs.  If you still can't find the time to pick up the phone to make a call, it is probably your beliefs creating your reality of no time.

Your effectiveness with a prospect is related to the confidence or attitude you display in youself and your consulting ability.  Your confidence and attitude stem from your beliefs.  Beliefs are either formed by our experiences and knowledge or by a conscious desired choice.  Managing our attitudes and beliefs is essential to becoming more effective in sales and marketing activities.

There have been numerous experiments done with people under hypnosis to test the power of beliefs.  An ice cube is placed on subjects arm but they are told it is searing hot metal. Instead of a cold spot on their arm, heat blisters have formed.  What matters most is not what is happening but what the person believes is happening.

If we can make our skin blister by our beliefs, it is safe to say we make or break a sales process by these same beliefs.  The reason this happens is a major function of our mind is to be right, even if being right does not serve us. We will find what we believe or are looking for.

• If we believe we cannot offer value to a client we come across this way.
• If we believe budgets are tight we tend to find prospects with this objection.
• If we believe there is an abundance of business to be had, we will find it.
• If we believe we can help businesses, we will.
• If we believe people will say no to our calls, they will.
• If you believe you can offer a service to business owners, you will.

Limiting beliefs will lead to fear. Fear is a place we cannot be if we are to serve our clients or expect to close more engagements.

Exercise

Be as honest as you can about the following questions.  List your answers on paper or share them with someone to be clear about them.

1. What do you believe people think about you as a consultant?
2. What do you believe people will be thinking or say if you call them for an appointment?
3. Why don't you ask the person you really think would be a good client for an appointment?
4. What are your beliefs of the The One Page Business Plan?
5. What beliefs do you currently have that might be limiting your effectiveness?
6. What fears creep into your thinking? (ex. rejection, offering bad advice, not having the correct answer, cash flow, keeping the business running, staying on top of the details). What do you believe will happen if your fear is realized?

If you listed beliefs that are ineffective or do not support you in acquiring clients, you will need to reframe them.  Try the following steps to do that.

1. Pick a belief you would like to change.
2. How do you feel when you think of this belief?
3. Ask yourself if that is what you want?
4. What part of your belief is fabricated? (ex. You are not a fortune teller so you cannot say it is true that people do not want to do business with you.  This is a fabrication.)
5. How would you like it to be?
6. What belief would support how you want it to be?
7. Commit to affirming this belief when your old belief enters your mind.

If you are still having trouble finding a positive belief consider these truths.

• Companies have pain and issues and would pay the right firm to help them go away.
• Business owners look for ways to get a return on investment.
• We don't have to know everything we just need to know how to find the right answers.
• If we can't do the job right the worst thing that can happen is we lose a little time and learn a lot.
• A smart business person would want to understand what resources are available to him/her.
• People want to be sold what they need.
• You have quality consulting tools that help clients.

If you are serious about changing your ineffective beliefs you can make a difference in your results.  You might be amazed to find out the prospects and clients you believed would not be interested have been waiting for someone like you to call.