What Makes a Top Sales Person?

Have you ever wondered what it is that sets extraordinary salespeople apart from those who are just getting by? Are they simply more talented or more intelligent? Do they have better connections with decision-makers? Or is something else going on?

The fact is that super-successful salespeople not only have great personalities and proven, powerful sales methods, they also have an elusive quality that we might call the X-factor. This X-factor includes inner resilience and a strong ability to empower oneself.

Super-successful salespeople more easily work through challenges and keep focused on their goals. Setbacks are not failures; they are simply temporary obstacles that present new challenges and opportunities. These individuals enjoy their work, they enjoy people, and some of them even seem to enjoy paperwork. Whether they know it or not, they are successful because they have subconscious beliefs that support success.

If you have thoughts like, “Prospects never answer my calls,” then it’s more likely that your calls will go unanswered. If you believe that closing sales is hard, it will be more difficult to attain success. Any limiting beliefs that you hold about success, abundance, effectiveness or other issues relating to the sales process are part of your subconscious programming. When you are faced with situations relating to these topics, these beliefs automatically kick in.

The big question, though, is this: Where does that programming come from? Why do you automatically “default” to the little voice inside that says that prospects don’t respond positively to you? Why doesn’t your little inner voice shout out to you: “I can do this.” “Cold calls are easy.” “I’m very comfortable and confident when it comes time to ask for the order.”

The problem is that the programming in your subconscious mind is locked in there—like a database of stored programs on a computer.

In his book Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton explains[1]:

…the subconscious mind is a repository of stimulus-response tapes derived from instincts and learned experiences. The subconscious mind is strictly habitual; it will play the same behavioral responses to life’s signals over and over again, much to our chagrin. How many times have you found yourself going ballistic over something trivial like an open toothpaste tube? You have been trained since childhood to carefully replace the cap. When you find the tube with its cap left off, your “buttons are pushed” and you automatically fly into a rage. You’ve just experienced the simple stimulus-response of a behavior program stored in the subconscious mind.

When it comes to sheer neurological processing abilities, the subconscious mind is millions of times more powerful than the conscious mind. If the desires of the conscious mind conflict with the programs in the subconscious mind, which ‘mind’ do you think will win over? You can repeat the positive affirmation that you are lovable over and over or that your cancer tumor will shrink. But if, as a child, you heard over and over that you are worthless and sickly, those messages programmed in your subconscious mind will undermine your best conscious efforts to change your life.

Lipton further explains that the subconscious mind is like an “autopilot” that processes up to 20,000,000 environmental stimuli per second while the conscious mind is a manual control that can process only about forty environmental stimuli per second. Therefore, the subconscious mind, with its speed and efficiency, is basically “autopiloting” our lives. In most cases, those areas of our lives that are successful continue to be successful because our subconscious beliefs support that success. Those areas that are stressful and challenging continue to stress and challenge us because, likewise, we have subconscious beliefs that keep the status quo in place in those areas.

Many of today’s motivational experts explain the same concept in a different way. Some refer to it as the Law of Attraction and tell us that we are attracting everything in our lives, even that which we say “no” to. They say the trick is to focus on what we want, not what we don’t want. However, that’s only part of the picture. If will power, commitment, and positive thinking were enough to override limiting beliefs that are programmed in our subconscious, this world would be brimming over with super-successful people.

You may have read many books on selling and attended numerous sales seminars. You might even have a private coach. But the success you’re striving for may still be elusive as long as your subconscious mind is running old programming that blocks or limits you. The fact is that most experts don’t tell you how to change that default setting in your subconscious so it will “default” into positive thinking.

The good news is that there are ways to reprogram the hard drive of our subconscious so we can attain all of the success we want. The “deeper secret” is a brain optimization process that easily reprograms and rebalances that old subconscious programming. Switched-On Selling brings together the best of the work of two powerhouse pioneers, Tony Alessandra, Ph.D., and Jerry Teplitz, JD, Ph.D. We have each dedicated our careers to helping others attain mastery in their lives through our keynotes, seminars, books and coaching. This book combines two very different technologies into an interactive experience that will “switch you on” for sales success.

Why the Brain Switches Off

(Part 2)

The brain can also switch off to certain activities due to a built-in survival mechanism.

To understand how this works, we have to look at the amygdala, a part of the brain that we inherited from our primitive ancestors. Located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain, these almond-shaped groups of neurons perform a primary role in the memory as it relates to processing emotional reactions.

The amygdala is triggered whenever a threatening situation arises, initiating the “fight, freeze, or flight” response in the body and basically overriding the “rational” part of the brain.

Psychologist Daniel Goleman refers to the amygdala as “the specialist for emotional matters.”⁶ In his book, Emotional Intelligence, Goleman explains that it is this area of the brain that gauges the emotional significance of events. He shares the story of a young man whose amygdala was surgically removed to control seizures. After the surgery, the young man became totally disinterested in people and preferred no human contact. With no amygdala, he seemed to have no feelings at all.

The amygdala is wired to analyze every experience we have to determine if trouble looms. Goleman explains⁷:

This puts the amygdala in a powerful post in mental life, something like a psychological sentinel, challenging every situation, every perception, with but one kind of question in mind, the most primitive: “Is this something I hate? That hurts me? Something I fear?” If so—if the external event that you are experiencing draws a “Yes”—the amygdala reacts instantaneously, like a neural tripwire, telegraphing a message of crisis to all parts of the brain. In the brain’s architecture, the amygdala is poised something like an alarm company where operators stand ready to send out emergency calls to the fire department, police, and a neighbor whenever a home security system signals trouble. When it sounds an alarm of say, fear, it sends urgent messages to every major part of the brain: it triggers the secretion of the body’s fight-or-flight hormones, which mobilizes the centers for movement, and activates the cardiovascular system, the muscles, and the gut.

To the extent that the amygdala takes over during an emotional emergency, the rational part of the brain doesn’t have a chance to control what’s going on. This rational part, which governs choice, is in the part of the brain called the cerebrum, which developed much later in the evolution of the human brain. An example of the amygdala-in­action is a news story about an out-of-control van that careened into three women pedestrians, striking all three. A number of bystanders reacted by rushing to the van, pulling the driver and passenger from their vehicle, and beating them to death. Seven men were charged with the murder of the driver and his passenger. It turned out that the accident was not even due to driver error. Of course, whether the driver was in error or not, the mob reaction had no justification. This type of deadly group reaction can be the result of emotional hijacking of the brain by the portion of the amygdala that triggered the adrenaline response. There are numerous news stories of people reacting first, thinking second. The amygdala takes charge and otherwise-sane people sometimes respond insanely.

Why the Brain Switches Off

(Part 1)

Your brain is filled with patterns and programming that are “locked” in. These patterns and programs control your thoughts, your reactions, your interactions with others, your ability to effectively apply sales techniques, and even your ability to be spontaneous.

If this programming has negative messages locked in, then no matter how many sales techniques you learn or how naturally gifted you may be, your success may be difficult and limited.

The programming that is locked into your brain comes from many sources, including your DNA. It is also has developed from the four pillars of your youth—your parents, your peers, your school, and your culture. If you were repeatedly exposed to the idea that you weren’t “good” enough or smart enough; that only “lucky” people are successful; that your sex, the color of your skin, your ethnic background, or your height, weight, or age restrict your chances in life; or any one of thousands of other negative, self-limiting beliefs, you have probably incorporated those beliefs into your life and are unconsciously living out those messages every day.

Most people aren’t even consciously aware of the extent to which limited thinking is wired into their brain. In many cases, these messages feed your “self talk”—the chatter that goes on in your head—constantly reinforcing the “I’m not good enough” messages. All you need to do is look at your life to know if that is the case for you. Simply ask yourself: Do I have what I want—or does success seem elusive?

When your brain is “switched-off” to certain aspects of the sales process, it is a struggle to perform them. As I mentioned earlier, a salesperson may be about to make cold calls and then suddenly decide instead to clean the desk or organize the files—anything to avoid making the cold call.

Another example is a salesperson on a sales visit to a new prospect who does a great job of developing rapport and probing the prospect, but doesn’t close the sale because she is afraid to ask for the order. In these cases, the idea of making the cold call or asking for the order is switching off the salesperson’s brain.

And when the brain switches off, it becomes such a struggle to perform the task at hand that the easiest thing to do is to avoid it by doing something else or doing it poorly.