YOUR PROGRAMMING MAKES YOUR SUCCESS

Your mindset about yourself and the world around you is constantly shaped by the significant events in your life. If you’ve ever lost a loved one suddenly, it’s more common for you to withdraw from similar relationships in the future. If you’ve ever been in a car accident, you might avoid certain highways or vehicles. It’s the same as when a soldier witnesses the horrific scenes on a battlefield first hand, they might return home with PTSD.

Mindset through programming can be positive, too. If you’re raised in a family with driven, career-focused parents, you will most likely succeed at least to the economic level you were raised. If you’re continually surrounded by positive messaging after huge events or initiatives – “you’re capable,” “you’re enough,” “I believe in you” – you’ll tell yourself those messages when you hit life’s inevitable patches of turbulence.

Life doesn’t always go as you plan. I’m sure you’ve learned that by now. There’re times in your life where you lay in your bed at night wondering how in the world you got to this point. Maybe you’ve just been let go, or you’ve lost someone you love, or you’re wondering how you’re going to support a new baby on the way. These are major life shocks, moments that anyone would agree are hugely formational. But what about the other 99% of your life? What is that doing to your mindset, to your programming as a person?

A lot, as it turns out.

The problem is that we universally agree that major moments shape our lives and conveniently ignore the effect of the rest. What about that small moment when you decided not to follow up on a prospect? What about those dozens of seemingly insignificant moments when you saw your boss resolve a conflict by yelling instead of talking it out? Or when you saw that huge to-do list one day and decided to put it off until tomorrow? Or when you went home for Thanksgiving a couple years ago, and your uncle spent an hour explaining to you why he hates salespeople?

Your brain is being programmed with every interaction, experience, and moment in your life. These things shape your mindset. And your mindset shapes your results. You can’t embody the mindset of a sales warrior unless you take total control of your own programming first, and choose to reprogram yourself to become a better version of you.

You’ve been programmed in three distinct ways. Each of these would be an example of negative programming.

1. See. You see a peer ask a prospect, “Let me know if you have any questions” vs. asking a prospect to buy. And so you now finish your presentations by asking if your prospect has any questions.

2. Learn. You’re taught by an author or speaker to wait for a buying signal before asking them to purchase, and you follow the advice.

3. Revolt. You’re told to follow a new selling process that will feel uncomfortable and decide not to use it.

And here are three examples of positive programming in action.

1. See. You see your coach consistently praise others and choose to do the same.

2. Learn. You’re taught how to sell through objections successfully.

3. Revolt. You’re told selling is about making friends first and choose to make it about resolution instead.

When a customer says they don’t trust most salespeople and you verbally agree with them, that’s programming. When you see a movie that depicts a salesperson as the bad guy, that’s programming. When you go out on a limb to ask someone to buy and they angrily respond with a “no,” that’s programming.

So, the question is, what does a sales warrior do with that? And the answer is that they start from awareness. They ask themselves one simple question: is this belief serving me well or holding me back?

The best way to reverse your negative programming is to drag it out into the light. If you have role rejection as a salesperson, then don’t hide from it. Confront it. Why might you have been programmed to think that way? If you believe nobody buys on the first conversation, where did that programming come from? If you believe the best way to make a sale is to make a friend, that’s programming. Where did you learn that? Did you see that? Was it learned? Or did a period of revolt lead to that belief?

Examining your programming is a process. But it starts with awareness. Once you start eliminating the negative programming you’ve experienced and replace it with something that aligns you with your mission as a sales warrior, you’ve taken another step forward on your journey.