Recognising Mindset

Recognising Mindset

Clearly, mindset can make all the difference in problem solving.

Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, a leading expert in motivation and psychology, and author of the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, discovered that everyone has one of two mindsets—fixed or growth.

Her work confirms what I have seen in sales over the years: people do tend to have either a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset. Why is this an interesting finding? Which mindset do you think leads to more success in sales?

Is Your Sales Mindset Set in Stone?

Consider the fixed, or closed, mindset as it applies to sales. If you have a fixed mindset, you might say certain things to yourself that freeze your thinking in one position.

Some of these things I have heard repeatedly throughout my sales career. Do you ever hear yourself saying these things to yourself?

  1. Sales is hard.
  2. Salespeople are born.
  3. I can’t sell!
  4. I tried sales once and it never worked.
  5. I will look stupid if a client says no.
  6. I have to win or lose.
  7. Will I succeed? Probably not.
  8. I hate sales, and will never be any good at it.

Chances are you have thought more than one of these things in the course of your career. With a fixed mindset, you see things only in black and white. In your mind, you hear words like “win or lose,” “right or wrong.” You assume things have always been done one way and nothing will ever change. This mindset, while understandable, may not work well for you if you sell a product or service.

Growing your Business

If you have a growth mindset, on the other hand, you may find yourself thinking differently. More and more often, you will catch yourself saying things like:

  1. Sales is easy.
  2. Salespeople are made, not born.
  3. I can’t sell . . . until the next opportunity.
  4. I tried sales once and while it was challenging, what did I learn?
  5. I need to make some more mistakes to learn.
  6. I win, lose, or get the opportunity to go back again.
  7. If I succeed—great! If I fail, what did I learn?

What if you could adopt this way of thinking, what Carol Dweck calls the “growth mindset” or “potential mindset”? It might help you push through limiting attitudes toward many things in your life or business. It might dramatically change your life. If you can catch yourself in your fixed mindset, you will start to get results much quicker. I promise.

It may be daunting to think about changing the very way you think about things. How can you do that?

  1. Look for opportunities to grow every day. When you begin to take up a growth mindset, you will find that if you are not learning new things you are actually failing. Challenging yourself to learn just one or two new things a day will build a growth mindset.
  2. Deal with failure and setbacks. Planning is an important part of growing. However, we do not always achieve all of our goals. Instead of beating ourselves up, look in a different direction and start again.
  3. Grow by doing. Ask yourself, what can I do differently? Apply a different approach to a problem and see what happens.

Download our free test- How’s my Mindset around Sales?

You will discover instantly how you rate in the sales and influencing department in your business.

Good Selling.

Here is an audio extract from my book

If I could just……..

If I could just……..

Every year I receive a calendar in the mail from one of my coaches who I have worked with for several years, his name is Dan Kennedy.

“A calendar you might say, what they still send out calendars!”

A bit old fashioned don’t you think? I have a phone for that.

His calendar is not like the one you receive from your insurance agent with nice scenes of places that you have never seen.

His has great ideas on every page for every month for you to think about.

This month I flipped over the month of November and this is what I found.

A question…

“If I could just…………………….”

Four words that could change your sales life overnight.

Try this…

If you want to know and identify what the key problem your client may have fill in the blank as if the client was asking this question

“If I could just……………………..”

How does your customer finish that sentence?

If you know that, that will give you a tremendous leverage and advantage and it allows you to construct an offer that is almost irresistible to you client.