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I BEGIN ALL my individual sales training sessions with the question, “How’s it going?” What I’ve found over the years is that students who begin with a negative answer, often repeatedly in session after session, struggle to achieve success more than the students who give a positive answer.
One of the most common answers I get is, “It’s a grind.” Think about this mindset. Forty hours a week for an entire career—“grinding away.” No wonder these salespeople are miserable and under-performing; it feels like forced labor in a prison camp.
For the first seven years of my career, “grinding away” was my mentality. I once told my mother, “I spend my day begging for orders.” At some point I looked around me and saw salespeople who, although not making as many calls as I made, made more money and were enjoying the process much more than me. I took a hard look in the mirror and said, “I have to figure this out.” I then began my search for what they had that I was missing.
Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Me-high Chick-sent-me-high) wrote the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. I was lucky enough to find this book in my search for better results in my sales life.
Csikszentmihalyi’s research led him to the following conclusion: “The best moments in our life are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
That pretty much sums up sales, don’t you think?
I wasn’t just trying to find a way to be better at sales but how to enjoy it more, because what I saw about the great salespeople around me is that while I was “grinding away,” they really enjoyed selling.
The Eight Elements of Flow
(1) Complete concentration on a task
(2) Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback
(3) Transformation of time (speeding up or slowing down)
(4) The experience is intrinsically rewarding
(5) Effortless and ease
(6) There is a balance between effort and skill
(7) Action and awareness merge losing conscious rumination
(8) There is a feeling of control over the task
How Salespeople Get into Flow
My suggestions for getting into flow in our day-to-day sales lives:
Planning – We have three people running our business—us the manager, us the salesperson, and us the admin person. Us the manager needs to plan out us the salesperson’s year, month, week and day. This leaves us the salesperson free to be an unconscious, nonjudgmental doer—in a flow state. The salesperson no longer needs to ask the question, “What do I do next?” but moves from one task to another seamlessly.
Concentrate on Process not Outcome – When a shooter in basketball is worrying about making or missing a shot, they usually “choke.” Michael Jordan is considered one of the most “clutch” players that ever played, but he missed 26 game-winning shots in his career. He also made 28. Most players won’t even take game-winning shots for fear of missing. As salespeople, we have to take game-winning shots all day long. I’ll take a 51.8% closing rate any day.
“We are in charge of the process; the sales gods are in charge of the outcome” is what I tell my students. If we give a great sales call, we will close more business. One of the things we see with great salespeople is we can’t tell if they are having a great day or not because their demeanor is the same. They concentrate on the process.
Positive Self Talk – We need to sell ourselves before we can sell anyone else. We need to go into each call knowing that we are going to get the order. This mindset is done pre-call. We must know why what we are promoting is a good deal and be ready to overcome any objections to the contrary.
This article is a Reader’s Digest look into the science of flow. I encourage you to look more deeply into it. Another book that touches on this science is The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Galway—a game changer for me as a basketball player.
– James Olsen is principal of Reality Sales Training, Portland, Or., and creator of SellingLumber.com. Call him at (503) 544-3572 or email james@realitysalestraining.com.
