The Sales Champion Mindset: Think, Sell, Win

To be successful, your organisation needs increasing sales. That means you and your team need to deal with challenges, setbacks, opportunities and rejections. How well you do comes down to mindset.

Remaining positive and motivated is crucial when needing to achieve targets. But that’s not always easy, even if you’re a naturally optimistic person.

Here are two personal stories that highlight techniques to help you change your mindset and kick your motivation into gear.

Conquering the Sales Call Mountain

Years ago, when I first started working in sales, I really struggled when someone from Marketing gave me a long list of leads, generated from a marketing campaign, to call.

I would look at this lengthy tome that loomed like a huge mountain. How will I get through this? I would remind myself that it only takes a single step to start.

Just take that first step. Pick up the phone. Try to have meaningful conversations with strangers.

But when you’ve got hundreds of leads in front of you, all you see is the rest of your life on the phone!

Then I realised I needed to look at this differently. Instead of seeing the whole thing, I’d focus on little chunks and set myself small goals.

I changed my mindset.

• Make 10 calls
• Have a five-minute break – stretch, walk about, make a cuppa
• Repeat until I’d done 50 calls
• Then have a longer 25-minute break

You may recognise this as the Pomodoro Technique. Those breaks helped me remain focused and motivated for longer, helping me to make calls confidently. And that meant more positive outcomes.

Let’s be frank – the sales world is tough. It’s rejection after rejection, especially if the economy or climate isn’t right. There’s always an excuse for turning you down.

But those positive phone calls made it all worthwhile, particularly when your marketing colleague showed gratitude and relief that their campaign was working.

I was becoming more successful simply by turning my massive spreadsheet into a game of Tens.

Shifting my Paralympic Mindset

My first ever Paralympic Games was another learning opportunity.

It was 1992, in Barcelona, and I was thrilled to compete. I’d won medals in the European Championships for the visually impaired, so this was an exciting next step.

But back then, the public’s perception was that it was ‘nice’ that disabled people could ‘have a go’ at the Paralympics. Bless them, so inspiring! … We know better now, in these more enlightened days.

Unfortunately, I felt the same and thought, “How hard can this be, competing against disabled people?!” How wrong I was. I lost every fight.

I came last and learnt a valuable lesson.

When I got home after the event, I looked deep inside myself to discover what went wrong.

It was my attitude. I forgot I was one of them and underestimated the competition. Instead of thinking ‘bless them’, I should have recognised that they were people, like me, who lived with a disability.

I hadn’t given them the respect that I wanted and expected for myself.

So, I changed my mindset.

Recognising that these people were like me put me into a different training mode. I trained even harder to compete and be at least on a par with these Paralympians.

I set higher goals to stretch me both on the Judo mat and in the gym. I got fitter, stronger, and more technically competent, giving me a better chance to win.

After a lot of hard work and determination – and crucially, through changing my mindset – I won the 1995 World Championships in the US.

These two examples of changing your mindset will positively affect the results you need, particularly in sales and in sports. It’s the difference between being really good and being outstanding.

Mindset isn’t just about motivation – it’s about transformation.