Manage Your Head Trash

Everyone, including the top producer at every company has head-trash, so the question is not how to avoid it, its what do you do when it rears its ugly head. Head trash is the negative beliefs we all have about our abilities, our clients, our products, and our "Selves". Successful sales reps realize that most head trash is untrue and don’t let these negative thoughts affect their behavior.

Poor salespeople are at the mercy of their head trash. They let their negative beliefs dictate what they do and how they do it. This affects their ability to make hard decisions and gutsy moves that are necessary. Its up to you to manage your head trash and not let it affect what is needed to do to move the sale forward.

Research has shown over 80% of what we say to ourselves is negative self-talk. We are our own biggest critic. The most successful sales people find ways of dealing with this self-talk.

Some examples of head trash are: “I can’t call at the __ level, I don't have experience doing that.” “I need to have an immediate answer when asked a question.” These are only a couple examples; head trash comes in numerous forms. They all have one thing in common. They hinder our performance. In order to accel, reprogramming thoughts and amending behaviors is paramount to creating the best results.

We must find ways of dealing with head trash. The outside world gives us enough negative feelings about ourselves, don’t let head trash contribute to additional negative ideas. Have a system to “take out the trash.”

1. Develop an awareness of head trash and commit to changing it.
2. Create a new and healthy more supportive belief.
3. List the actions that someone with this new belief would take.
4. Do the actions, regardless of how they make you feel.
5. Track and measure the results.
6. Review the new belief daily.

By managing head trash we can stay on course and do what’s necessary to move the sales process forward.