Don't Be Yourself

I’ve always told people that in order to sell more effectively you have to be yourself. I am beginning to see the error in that piece of advice. In many cases, that’s the last person you want to be because, in many cases, your “self” is what’s holding you back.

Whether it’s selling, persuading, or asking for the close; when you tell someone to be their “selves” there is a huge presumption that the self is sufficient to accomplish the task at hand. And it’s not because of who you are, or that you’ll never be capable of these things, but because of years of bad programming you’ve been subjected to over the years.

Your “self” is the reason you won’t take action, won’t pick up the phone and call, and can’t close a sale. Your “self” doesn’t believe in it’s “self” and can therefore never assist you in closing a deal.

There’s only one way to change this: by understanding why and how your bad habits are sabotaging your life, only then can your ‘self’ be able to help you achieve your goals and aspirations.

At the age of 2 or 3 the real-world program begins to shape who we are to become, and what we hear and see during those years will determine (to a large extent) who our ‘self’ will be. If we hear positive messages accompanied by acts of nurturing or encouragement, we stand a good chance of surviving childhood intact and a productive member of society. If we hear negative messages which are then reinforced by negative actions, there’s a good chance that our adulthood might face a few challenges.

But life is never so binary: good upbringing or bad upbringing can never account for 100% of our current behaviors. The self-examining person should seek to identify and understand underlying behaviors and how we’ve been programmed to behave. Your ‘self’ is much like a computer algorithm; a program that executes a set of instructions that it has been programmed with to achieve a certain task. Like any algorithm, if the programming is faulty, it’ll never be useful or optimize performance.

One of the most common examples of childhood programming that has negatively affected you in adulthood is the statement: “Don’t talk to strangers”, because it might be dangerous to do so (never guaranteed, but possible).  This is perfect example of “gray programming”; any advice that is never absolute, seeks to protect the self and is always biased towards what could go wrong (negative).

The bias implied in the statement, “Don’t talk to strangers” is that they might hurt you as opposed to help you. It’s a negative statement learned in childhood that indirectly tells us not to trust anyone who we don’t know personally for fear that they might do us harm (actually we’re more likely to be killed by a family member or friend than a complete stranger). Believing this eliminates the possibility that an interaction with a stranger might lead to a positive outcome.

Now, is the only reason you shy away from strangers is because it was taught to you as a child?

No - as children, we can already sense that speaking to someone you aren’t familiar with isn’t safe. Our reptilian brain focuses on safety and security. We know intuitively, after millions of years of evolution that the unknown should always be avoided or should be handled with caution. Someone telling us not to speak to strangers is only further reinforcing what we, at a subconscious level, are pre-programmed to believe.

Because the “Don’t talk to strangers” comment is being reinforced constantly throughout your young life and teen years, it’s no wonder many people have a hard to time starting a conversation with someone they don’t know. First, the fear of speaking to a stranger can be paralyzing as your subconscious struggles to contradict something its known its whole life. Second, this fear makes you unsure of yourself so you’ll stammer, and try to find the right words. It’s not that you can’t complete a full sentence, it’s more that your brain is resisting you doing so. It’s like trying to drive without knowing your emergency brakes are on. You want to move forward but you just can’t seem to get moving and you don’t know why.

In selling, imagine knocking on a prospect’s door and trying to start a conversation. It feels unnatural because you weren’t raised that way. You don’t have any practice in doing so and find yourself fumbling to find the right words or worse, trying to retrieve some trite sales script that comes off sounding mechanical at best.

The “Don’t talk to strangers” is one of many lines of code that have been used to program our brain and how we perceive the world. We have been programmed indirectly, which drives our attitude and, ultimately, our behavior. Not all programming is good and not all programming is bad. To understand how the ‘self’ has been programmed, it may be worth going through the lines of code to see what’s been said to the self and what the self has accepted as truth. Check off how many of these lines sound familiar to your:

It’s not polite to interrupt

Don’t interrupt adults when they’re speaking

Children should be seen, not heard

Respect your elders (they’re right you’re wrong)

Don’t be a know it all

Keep your 2 cents to yourself

Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong

Don’t speak unless spoken to.

I hate people who can’t stop talking

I wish he would stop talking

Silence is golden

Never ask people for money

Never borrow money

Don’t be so sure of yourself (ego/confidence isn’t good)

People who stand out get shut out

God gave you two ears and one mouth; use them in that ratio

Listen, you might learn something

Stop thinking about yourself

Sharing is caring

Don’t show off; nobody likes a show-off

Money is the root of all evil

Money corrupts people

Help the less fortunate

Stop thinking about yourself and think of others

Be considerate of others feelings

Rich people are usually evil

Money won’t buy your happiness

Can’t trust people who talk fast

Salespeople are the worst; they’re only interested in making money.

How many of those you selected do you feel impact you to this day? How many of those lines do you think hinder your ability to more successful? For example, how often do you think your subconscious told you that “It’s not polite to interrupt”  which caused you to put off making a cold call or prevented you from being in the right frame of mind?

Sales, in many ways, is about interrupting. It’s about interrupting a person or company’s pattern of behavior long enough for them to listen to you and understand how you might be able to help them. When salespeople interrupt someone’s day, the intended purpose is not to just sell them, not to just convince them, but to instruct them on a product or service that will benefit them or their company.

If you can convince yourself that selling is about interrupting with the sole purpose of enlightening them, then you’ve succeeded in removing a bad line of code in your brain’s programming. One down, a few more lines to go.

You can learn everything about selling: prospecting, closing, presentation and so on. But if your brain’s programming isn’t willing to do the things required of it because it has a belief system that contradicts what it’s trying to do, it simply won’t work.

Here’s how you reprogram your brain:

Step 1: Think of a sales behavior you’re either afraid or hesitant to do. These behaviors might include: presenting, starting a conversation, presenting price, asking for the order, asking tough questions.

Step 2: Ask yourself why you’re reluctant or afraid to carry out the behavior? Think on this deeply and try to think of what ‘line of code’ might be influencing you.

Step 3: Challenge or Reframe that line of code. In the case of cold calling, the programming was “Don’t talk to strangers.” Challenge the premise of the bad line of programming. For example, you may say to yourself, “If you don’t talk to strangers, I’ll never meet anyone new”, “Not talking to strangers will limit my exposure to different points of view”, or “How is it possible to learn from others if I’m too afraid to talk to them?”

This simple 3- step process will help you be more effective not only in selling but, in other aspects of your life. Much of the programming we received when we were children or teens were meant to protect us. Our parents, teachers, and friends had good intentions when they pounded those lines of codes into our heads.

These same rules or lines of code which once served to protect us from the unknown and allowed us to ‘fit in’, may now be damaging our ability to move forward.

Get more confidence in cold calling, leaving voicemails, getting referrals and more with Sales Velocity Academy.