Have you ever noticed that when you focus your mind on what you don’t want, you almost always attract exactly what you are trying not to?  Since most of us are visual people, the only way to focus on what we don’t want is to actually picture what we don’t want in our minds.  For example, if you tell yourself not to drop something, you have to actually picture yourself dropping it in your mind, and then try to focus on not doing that.  The end result is that your mind doesn’t recognize the fact that you don’t want to drop it, but rather focuses on what you picture in your mind, which is dropping the object, and, of course, that’s exactly what you do! 

To avoid this problem, you have to focus on the positive outcome you want, not the negative one.  In this example, you need to focus on holding onto the object, instead of not dropping it.  So, how do you end this problem once and for all?  Simply remove the following words and phrases from your vocabulary:

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is a professional sales person.  She was telling me about how annoyed she’s become with her sales manager, and how he’s micromanaging the sales team.  She told me about how they are now required to make 9 sales calls/day, they have to write a detailed call report for each sales call, and need to host at least 5 weekend events for their prospective clients.  Her manager has even eliminated office days, as he wants everyone making their mandatory 45 calls/week. 

When I heard her telling me this, I couldn’t help but think of the message that is being sent to the sales team.  The shift has been taken away from sales effectiveness, and is now focused on quantity instead of quality.  If you stop to think about this, during a normal 8 hour day, making 9 sales calls means that you have 53 minutes/call, including drive time between stops.  How much time can the sales person spend building a relationship with the customer in this situation?  This sounds more like an HMO healthcare plan than it does a sales team, doesn’t it?  Throw in weekend events and evenings sitting at the computer writing needless call reports, and he may soon have a mutiny on his hands! 

So, if you are a sales manager, and you really want to increase the production and effectiveness of your sales team, what should you do?  Here are a couple of tips:

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, the world is about to end!  It’s an election year, and apparently we are spiraling towards an unavoidable massive recession, gas prices are skyrocketing out of control, and all hope has been lost in America!  It seems the “gloom and doom” prognosticators are ruling the day.  If you listen for long enough, you may just start believing all of this.

I’m sure you are hearing this from your clients and customers, too.  Maybe your sales have tapered off recently, and you are starting to panic, just thinking that all of this just might be true.  And, in preparation for the impending slow down, you have started to take a look at where you should make some cutbacks, right?  I’m guessing that your marketing budget is looking like the perfect place to make some cuts, isn’t it?  I mean, honestly, you’ve been spending all this money, and business is slowing down, so it seems like a great place to start!  Well, cutting your marketing budget during a downturn is exactly the wrong move to make, and here’s why: