4 Ways To Have A Great Attitude
Prefer To Watch: Here’s The Video
Summary
Home services sales training focused on attitude and mindset
Learn why skill development beats talent every time
Turn rejection and failure into useful feedback
Use goals to stay motivated through adversity
Eliminate negative influences that kill performance
Home Services Sales Training – 4 Ways To Have A Great Attitude
Selling home improvements can be brutal. After being in this business for 35 years and being in over 16,000 homes I’ve had my share of let’s say challenging customers and times. Learning how to maintain your attitude consistently is the key to making money consistently doing home improvement sales. Anyone one can have a great attitude when everything is going great but being able to keep that attitude when everything goes wrong is a different story.
One example of the power of attitude is the reason you always see new people in this business sell. I know you see it. They don’t know the product, presentation or how to close yet they come back with sales. That’s because in it’s purest form sales is a transfer of enthusiasm and when you’re new you are still excited and haven’t become bitter and jaded like the weak sales people. Sorry but’s that’s the truth. This job has a lot of adversity with the difficult customers we see, the hours and the driving and if you don’t learn how to keep your attitude positive the job will eat you alive.
That’s why this job is hard but it’s also the good part about this job. In life you get paid based on the difficulty of replacing you. Do something anyone can do like push a broom and they pay you nothing. Do something hard that not a lot of people can do like selling home improvement on commission and when you are good you get paid more than the governor of your state. Think about that. There were years where I was paid more than the president.
Here are four things that helped me keep my attitude strong and made me a lot of money selling in peoples homes. Please listen to all four to make sure you don’t miss the one that would have helped you.
Home Services Sales Training Tip #1 – Always Be Learning and Improving Your Skills
The first thing you need to be doing to keep your attitude strong is to always be learning and getting better. The best definition of attitude I’ve heard is it’s your vision of the future. If you aren’t making any money and you don’t know why life sucks and your vision is bleak. The point is that unless you see something changing it can seem hopeless. Your attitude and life will change when you realize that the reason your paycheck sucks is because you do. Not as a person, father, friend etc. Don’t be silly it just means you suck as a salesperson.
But if you understand that you just aren’t good enough yet and you can change that by learning and improving your skills then you see a light at the end of the tunnel and it gives you hope to persevere. It's one thing to suffer but your attitude will be good when you can feel yourself getting better and stronger everyday. Then it becomes a question of not whether but just when.
The key is that you have to work harder on yourself than the job. The leads, customers prices and the job will never change and like life will never get easier. The only thing that is one hundred percent controllable is your skill set. It’s hard because you aren’t good enough yet. That’s why self improvement is the number one key that took me to the top and can take you there too.
Home Services Sales Training Tip #2 – Learn to See Failure as Feedback
The second thing that will help keep your attitude strong is how you look at things especially failure. Understand that failure is just feedback telling you that you are doing it the wrong way. Then change what you are doing. Change by learning and practicing self improvement that we just discussed. When you understand that it will change failure from discouraging you to encouraging you. Another way of looking at failure besides giving you feedback and helping you change is to know you can’t win until you loose.
For example I used to look at selling like mining for gold. I knew that when I went in the mine looking for gold that for every 7 rocks I turned over 3 of them would be gold and 4 of them would be coal. Then when I turned over the coal I was happy because I knew that I got one of the four coals out the way to get to the three golds. An example of that in real life is I knew that in a year if I ran 576 leads in a year if I sat 85% that I would have 86 no shows and then 489 sit then down to the sales etc. down to the $190,000 in commissions the numbers came out to.
So when I took the job I accepted that I would have to have 86 no shows or bs leads to get the money I wanted. So when I got a no show it was like” cool only 85 more to go”. Most of having a positive attitude is how you look at what happens to you. You can’t control what happens to you. What happens to you happens to everyone else. You think your’re the only one who was ever brutalized in life. It's not what happens to you it’s what you do when it happens to you that counts. Do you get up or stay down and whine? The choice is yours.
Home Services Sales Training Tip #3 – Use Goals to Power Through Adversity
The third thing that will help keep your attitude strong is to have goals and understand how to use them. Let’s cut to the chase unless you can show me your written goals with a time line either you don’t have goals or know how to use them. Having goals in it’s simplest terms is using the power of something you want bad enough that you will do anything and withstand any adversity to get it. The key to goals is not what but the whys. Your child, someone you love enough to do anything for them, your retirement in luxury vs working at Walmart. When you use goals correctly you don’t even want to sleep and can’t wait until you get up the next day so you can be on fire.. You need to be in the frame of mind that you will do whatever it takes to get what you want. Goals define what you want and the why gives it power. My favorite saying is “It’s not over until I win.” Goals will do that for you.
Home Services Sales Training Tip #4 – Avoid Negative People and Protect Your Mindset
The fourth thing that will help you have a great attitude is to not hang around losers. You can’t fly with the eagles if you peck with the pigeons. It’s one of the main reasons that when I teach goal setting is that you don’t share your goals unless it’s with someone who has your mindset or they will just throw water on your fire. Sadly people will rain on your parade unless they are like minded because they don’t understand, they have the self limiting beliefs that keep people down or may just be flat jealous of you doing something that they can’t or won’t’.
That’s why I tell people that if you never complain, you never explain. The worst thing that will affect your career and income in sales is the people you associate with. You know the Dennys meetings where everyone gets to compare how horrible their jobs and the leads are. What good will that do you accept help justify your lack of performance and briefly make you feel better because you can cry together.
The creed I live by is simple. If you don’t like it change it, if you can’t change it accept it and if you can’t accept it leave but never whine. You are in control. There was a story I like about the sales person who went to a customers house and when he got to the front porch the customer was sitting there and there was a dog whining on the ground next to him.mmm.mmm. The sales person said “what’s wrong with your dog?” The customer said “well he’s laying down on a rusty nail” The sales person says “well why doesn’t he move” To which the customer replied “Well that’s the thing it hurts it enough for him to whine but not enough for him to do anything about it!”
You know what you have to do. Know go get what you deserve.
I appreciate you listening to this video. I hope it didn’t come across as mean it’s just that I’m passionate about people not getting what they deserve when they work at a job that is this hard. If you want more on this subject listen to the video on “Why Failure is Good” or check out my posts on Home Improvement Sale Closing.
Happy Selling!
