Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Focus on the Positive

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...Focus on the positive at all times--there is no other option. I once watched an interview with former First Lady Barbara Bush where she was asked why she had such a positive attitude and her answer was that happiness is a choice. When we get up in the morning we have the option of choosing to be happy…or not, but whatever we choose, it is our choice. This is something I have always remembered and try to live by this belief as much as I can.

I also think that this is philosophy applies to what we do in business--especially sales. As I travel around the country working with salespeople and sales teams, one of the things that strikes me is how often sales people can rile themselves up into a virtual orgy of negativity. Here’s what I mean: You sit around the table having a meeting with four or five salespeople to get an idea of how things are going. You want to know what they are seeing out there and how they are coping. One person brings up the economy and how bad it is and everyone will join in and soon the entire group is going on how bad the economy is and how that makes it impossible to sell. Once they’ve completely exhausted that subject someone else will bring up China. Once again, they’re complaining about how everyone is going offshore and that it's impossible to sell because every single one of their customers has decided to buy their products offshore.

Soon they're all holding hands and agreeing that it's impossible to sell because of offshore competition. Another person will soon point out that even those customers who still buy boards from suppliers here in the U.S. only care about price. She’ll say that we just cannot possibly compete with the low prices offered by online companies because their prices are so low that there's nothing they can do. In the end, if left unchecked, these salespeople will work themselves into a frenzy of defeatism that can go from a sniffle to full-blown pneumonia in three nanoseconds.

My job as a consultant, and your job as a manager, is to stop this kind of thinking at all costs. If you let a meeting go in this direction you are allowing your salespeople to fail. If you sit there in silence waiting for them to finish talking you are giving them your tacit permission to give up. In short, you are telling them that they are right and there is nothing they can do but just go out there and keep trying to do their best. Ugh! Don’t do that! You might as well fire them and close the company, because there is no hope.

First, these statements are not accurate; they are not facts. They are merely excuses from people who are either too lazy or too untalented to do their jobs. Great salespeople always find a way. They always manage to make the sales and make their numbers no matter what's going on in the world.

Poor salespeople also find a way to make themselves feel better for failing. They only choose to believe what they see in the newspaper or on the news. It’s as if they hear about a recession and think, “Aha! That’s why I’m failing; that’s why I can’t win any business.” Listen, no matter what the unemployment rate is, no matter how skewed the trade balance with China is, no matter how low the other guy’s prices are, it is the job of the salesperson to find a way…and there's always a way.

I find it interesting that when I talk to successful people, they don’t even discuss such things. Many of them seem totally unaware of this week’s headlines. Most just concentrate on doing their job and finding and winning the right business. I’ve also noticed that when a great salesperson is in a meeting that has turned into self-absorbed pity party, he remains strangely silent  and doesn’t join in. I have witnessed this phenomenon on several occasions--these people just quietly walk out of the room.

I have also noticed that when I bring up the successful salesperson to the negative members of a team--tell them that John or Joan is having a great deal of success under the same circumstances they're whining about--it will take the negatives about three nanoseconds to come up with 50 reasons why they are different, that they have a better territory, or their customers are more understanding, or whatever they can come up with to marginalize that success.

When all is said and done, the more successful the other guy is, the more they have to face the fact they just aren't doing their jobs. They are falling short and not for the reasons they think.

Our job as managers is to motivate our people to look forward; it is our job to help them find a way to make things happen. It is also our job to make sure that we never let our sales team get bogged down in the negatives, but rather uplifted by what they can accomplish if they do the work. We must show them the possibilities rather than the limitations and never, ever permit them to stop trying. We must show them that success is a choice. It’s only common sense.