Optimism Gets You More Business

“Your attitude about who you are and what you have is a very little thing that makes a very big difference” – Theodore Roosevelt.

How should we achieve the right attitudes?

Being optimistic is one of the most important attitudes when you get up every morning. Then, are you being optimistic in life? 

I hope the answer is YES! In my career, I have seen many successful sales styles. Whatever they are, aggressive or conservative, they are usually more optimistic than pessimistic.

Apart from your list developed from “My New Year’s Resolution as a Salesperson”, I do suggest that you should practice being optimistic as well.

There are many statistics of the relationship between optimism and success. Those results showed that optimistic salespeople outsell pessimistic sales by more than 30 percent in almost all industries.

Optimism does bring success and optimistic sales earn more money for their companies. Therefore, which one do you choose to be in your career?

There are many practices to build up your optimism. Here I will share three main benefits and tactics which work for me:

3 ways to Apply Optimism to Increase Sales Productivity

1.Be more motivated and persistent

We all know that business development is very challenging.

Optimistic people will believe that they have executed right strategies in favorable circumstances. This kind of self-affirmation will help them to be more motivated and encourage them to reproduce the next success.

Besides, when facing adverse circumstances, they often attribute to external causes instead of blaming themselves too much.

I practice one simple way to be more optimistic every day. I call it “One Positive Experience”.

Since your subconscious mind is more powerful than the conscious mind, I think and write down one positive experience of the past 24 hours and keep doing it for at least one month.

You will start to notice the difference of the optimism power after one week. Once you practice it even longer, you will see yourself more motivated and persistent in your work.

2.Get more opportunities

Although we try to build up our optimism, I don’t mean to have over-optimism but knowing how to control your negative thoughts.

In sports competition, the typical way to improve your match result is to turn your weaknesses into strengths. For most people and circumstances, we are optimistic except for adverse situations.

If you learn how to transform negative emotion into positive energy, you can effectively control your negative thoughts and become a real optimistic business developer.

There are many books teaching how to control your negative emotions. For example, Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy which helps self-control and courage development over your destructive emotions.

There is one famous Stoic exercise called “Premeditario Malorum”. You imagine what could go wrong first and write down your plan B, the benefit of doing it and the cost of not doing it.

For some inevitable setbacks, this exercise helps you mentally get prepared and be brave to new opportunities in advance. Precisely because of it, you normally have contingency plans which increase possibilities to achieve the objectives as well.

I use this method to get out of my comfort zone many times and naturally acquire more opportunities/leads during the business development process.

3.Be influential to your team and clients

There are many factors determine the success of one B2B project. I believe that people are the core element of it. They are not only you but also your co-workers, customers, and even third-parties.

Although in most of the time you cannot control whom you work with, you can decide how you treat them and be influential to the team. I started to practice “one kind act” per day.

Because a small act can make a big difference of their life and you get back what you give as well such as trust, respect, and friendship which are one of the foundations of every long-term business relationship.

I do at least one real and honest kindness every day even just a small praise by email. Remember that being sincere makes it a real kindness act.

After all, it is your decision how to perform your work every day. As a business developer, we usually focus more on hard skills rather than soft skills.

Optimism is indeed a soft skill that will benefit your revenue and bottom line in the long run. I promise that if you keep practicing optimism, you will feel motivated immediately and more opportunities will come afterward. Clients around you will get inspired and do more business with you as well.

The more you give, the more you get back. So let your optimism be contagious and get you more business! 

Tell me which optimism practice you use every day!

P.S. Before you go, you may also be interested in the following articles:

My New Year’s Resolution as a Salesperson

Conflict Enhances your Complex Problem Solving Skill

Work less to Achieve more Sales? Follow these Effective Habits

 

POST WRITTEN BY

Sarah Lin

A strategic business development professional with +15 years proven business track record in Telecommunication and IT. She is experienced in managing key accounts and developing international business opportunities through building effective project teams. With a natural love of new ventures, this results in her ability to take risks and opportunities each time. Then her unique insights from cultural integration will definitely boom your business to the next level in this new era of globalization.

Life is a journey, only you can decide how to embrace it!

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