My girlfriend was watching ‘Gia’ yesterday, a movie about one of the world’s top supermodels in the late ’70s starring Angelina Jolie as Gia Carangi, the supermodel.
I walked past and one scene strikes me hard…
Gia is beautiful and very creative. She’s one of the first to present unusual poses, facial expressions, and gestures whom many top models emulate then till today. Unfortunately…
She was hooked on heroin. Her career rapidly declined after people find out about her addiction so she went to a rehabilitation center to help her quit. That was the scene I saw, she…
She was struggling on the bed when the urge strikes her. She twists, moans, groans, runs around, pinches herself, punches herself, and many other ‘techniques’ to lower her urge or to distract herself.
Then I told my girlfriend, “Quitting drugs is really difficult isn’t it?” She replied with something *shocking* – “Yup! It’s like bad habits, it’s really hard to break it, and it hurts a lot.”
That inspired me to write about this issue. Let me ask you this: you got a bad habit? I know I do…
The key to breaking bad habits is being aware of them. Awareness leads to change. Once you are aware of it, then acknowledge that they are bad and then take action to break, switch, replace them – lots of action.
A habit is defined as a pattern of behavior that is followed repeatedly until it becomes automatic. This means we keep doing a certain thing until it becomes a part of us. It won’t be easy to change a habit. It took us dozens, hundreds if not thousands of repeated actions to cultivate these bad habits. Be patient and consistent.
What are some of the bad habits of salespeople? I’ll list a few, maybe you can add more to it.
They sell features instead of benefits. They don’t do research before approaching a prospect. They talk too much and ask too few questions. They whine, bitch, and complain too much. They blame and make excuses too much. The product push instead of customizing solutions to needs. They give out discounts the moment they are pressured. They do non-productive activities too much instead of focusing on sales activities.
Here are some ways I find effective and useful to break our bad habits:
>> List down all the bad habits and their affected areas or consequences. Like smoking, affected areas: health, breathe teeth. Consequences, lung cancer, your dream partner faints when he/she tries to kiss you.
>> Find the root of the habit. If you always procrastinate in doing cold calling, find out why. Excuses: they don’t like me calling them, they won’t be in any way, I have other things to do first, etc… The REAL reasons: fear of rejection, not skillful enough, your opener sucks, etc… Once you know the root, then you can…
>> List down ways to overcome them or alternative to the bad habits. Instead of always talking about your products or services, shut up and ask questions. By the way, talking a lot is a really bad habit for most salespeople.
>> Find the trigger. Another bad habit of salespeople is they get defensive whenever they get objections. Why is that so? Because they view it as an attack. Because they are afraid the objection may kill the sale, so the tendency is to react instead of respond. The objections are the trigger. In my training, I teach the secret of Centering – a master art secret to staying calm but alert to surrounding happenings. By Centering you will be able to respond instead of reacting. Come to my negotiation warrior training and I’ll teach you how to Center so you won’t be defensive when faced with objections or when buyers say your price is too high or when they pressure you to give them discounts or threaten you that they will give the business to your competitor. This skill will change your life forever, won’t it?
>> Next, don’t beat yourself up because you repeat the bad habit instead focus and praise yourself when you do remember to break it – the psychology of reinforcement theory.
>> Stop saying stupid things to yourself. If one of your bad habits is forgetting where you park your car, stop saying “I’m so lousy, I have such bad memory.”, say “I can sure find it” or something positive.
>> Get support. You know when you have a buddy pouring his/her heart to help you, the tendency for you to succeed will be higher.
>> Get new support. Means change your circle of friends. If you want to improve on your sales results and you are mixing with a bunch of non-performers, don’t expect to shine. I play badminton now and then, to get good at badminton I need to play with better players, if I play with lousy players, how good can I get even though I have a strong mindset to be great? This point, very important. Mix with winners, sales pros, sales ninjas.
Breaking habits is like martial arts. You don’t do 1000 things 1 time and expect yourself to be a black belt. You do 1 thing 1000 times to master something. And that’s how habits are changed. Consistent, discipline, and tenacity.
// Angeline Jolie, Drugs and Breaking Bad Habits!
// By Hanzo Ng, Sales Ninja Grandmaster
Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their salespeople into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation, and leadership training, visit our website.
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