Are You Making Excuses or Are You Making Sales?

By Debbie Allen, All Rights Reserved 

Your personal belief system will either move you ahead – or hold you back.  Period! 

The power of your belief system truly is amazing!  It is like your own personal barometer that gauges the power (or lack of it) in your subconscious mind every day. 

Most of our beliefs have been programmed deeply into our minds since childhood. Therefore, we all act and feel according to what we believe to be true about ourselves and our environment, much from beliefs formed when growing up.

Many of those beliefs and thoughts are negative and self-defeating.  We all have negative self-talk from time to time, nagging at us and beating up our confidence even after we worked so hard to build it up.  The good news is that you are an adult now, and you have the ability to take control of those voices in your head. 

You can either choose to blame your environment and make excuses for it and your lack of sales – or – you can accept the fact that you are in control and have the ability to think and act positively in any sales environment.

You have the ability to change your beliefs, your thoughts and actions.  Only you can allow yourself to move past old negative ways of thinking.  You have the ability to move away from any self-destructive, self-sabotaging talk that creates barriers along the path of your success.

Once realizing that all of your thoughts, feelings and actions are all the result of your own self-images and personal beliefs you can then, and only then, begin to move past behaviors that hold you back from reaching your peak sales potential.    

When you develop a positive mind-set about selling, you instantly begin to break down negative and limited belief systems.  Barriers and obstacles that once may have limited your sales success begin to move away. 

Here are some real life negative comments that I hear from sales people.  Listen up!  If you are hearing any of these in your head you had better lock down your brain and rid yourself of these thieves that are robbing you from sales success. Get rid of them fast!  

• .I’m just no good at selling.

• .How am I ever going to measure up to ___________?

• .The economy is not good in the area and sales are down.

• .Ever since _________ I can’t seem to get my sales back on track.

• .The weather is keeping everyone away.

• .Since I don’t want to appear pushy or intrusive I avoid promoting myself.  

• .I don’t want to promote myself as an expert because I don’t know enough yet. 

• .How come I get all the “Pain in the Rear” customers?

• .There is too much competition in my industry right now.

Excuses, excuses, excuses! Now I’m sure that the vast majority of the time you don’t have negative and/or ineffective comments like these flying out of your mouth, but occasionally we all do.  It is just human nature.  The sad thing, is that most of us don’t even recognize this as negative self-talk, nor do we understand what this type of talk does to our belief programming.

Negative self-talk kills opportunities for sales  success!

The worse part about negative self-talk is when we can’t stop it from flowing out of our mouths at times.  In fact, we say it so much we believe it to be true.  We program our beliefs to accept it as the truth, yet these are only words.  These ineffective words kill your opportunities to close more sales.

Speaking negative, unhealthy words out loud only damages your belief system even more.  Once self-defeating thoughts leak out of our heads and into the form of affirmations, we sabotage both personal and professional success.  Negative affirmations are extremely damaging to your self-confidence. But on the other hand, positive affirmations are amazingly empowering. 

We become what we think about most!

Affirmations are one of the most important elements of creative visualization.  To “affirm” means to make firm.  An affirmation is a strong statement that something is already so.  It is a way of making firm that which you are imagining.  If you imagine failure, you will allow negative forces to come to you that will continue to make you fail and lose more sales.

Positive and empowering affirmations allow the universe to reward you with unlimited opportunities and abundance.  We all have opportunities to become more successful, yet the negative mind discards them before they ever have a chance to blossom and grow.

The idea behind affirmations is that through the repetition of positive statements, we can improve our self-respect, make greater progress toward growth, and in general, increase our magnetism to success. To progress in sales, a positive self-image is essential.   SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1As soon as you judge yourself, you are back to limited sales success and limited beliefs. 

To expand your self-image, replace limited beliefs with powerful affirmations, feelings and actions.

To affirm is to state that it is so.  As you maintain this attitude of your belief system as true, regardless of all evidence to the contrary, you will receive a response. Repeating an affirmation, knowing what you are saying and why you are saying it, will lead your belief system to a state of consciousness where it becomes reality.  Keep on affirming that you are a dynamic salesperson who can and will exceed any goals you set before you.  As you repeat your affirmation over and over again, allow your non-conscious mind to catch up and go to work on your behalf.

Triumphs are won in your mind first!

Now take your affirmation to another level.  Speak your affirmations out loud. Share them with people who support your success.  If you are like most of us, you will probably let yourself down before letting others down.  By sharing your sales goals out loud with others, you allow yourself to step up to a higher level of commitment toward those goals.  What you focus on most becomes reality!

Don’t bother sharing your affirmations, beliefs and goals with negative people.  These Dream stealers are negative forces that rob you of personal growth and empowerment.  Often, they come in the form of Doomsayers that enjoy wallowing in their own self-pity.  They focus on What Ifs and limited beliefs.

Since they enjoy the company of like-minded people, they will work hard at keeping you down at their level.  Don’t be tempted to go down there.  Refuse to allow them to influence your beliefs.  You become who you surround yourself with. 

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Bio: Debbie Allen is one of the world’s leading authorities on sales and marketing.  She is the author of five books including Confessions of Shameless Self Promoters and Skyrocketing Sales.  Debbie has helped thousands of people around the world attract customers like crazy with her innovative, no-cost marketing strategies and secrets to sales success.  Her expertise has been featured in Entrepreneur, Selling Power and Sales & Marketing Excellence.  Sign up for her FREE 6-week e-Course Business Success Secrets Revealed ($97 value) and take the online business card quiz to rate you marketing online now at www.DebbieAllen.com.