Your psychological patterns as a Sales Leader

Your psychological patterns as a Sales Leader

Your psychological patterns as a Sales Leader are automatic. They spring into action whenever a specific trigger occurs.

They will vary dependant on the specific situation you are in…for example, your automatic patterns when with your top performers could be very different when with your under-performers.

The problem is…it’s unlikely you’ll even notice which pattern is playing out because it’s an unconscious pattern that you do without thinking. A bit like breathing and blinking — you don’t have to think about it for the action to happen…it just does!

So where do you start?

You will be achieving success in many areas of your Sales Leadership so there’s no need to explore these as clearly your unconscious patterns are creating a great result. You can celebrate these patterns 🙂

Focus on the situations and results that don’t harvest success. You’ll need to think about each one as an individual situation…focus only on one at a time.

Now take a few minutes to replay the situation in your mind from start to finish. It’s useful for your starting point to be slightly before the scenario you’re focusing on. For example…you are working on something and feeling happy and totally in the zone when the phone rings and it’s one of your under-performers. They want the rest of the month off for an unplanned holiday and you feel the emotions rising in your body. Your starting point needs to be when you are happy and in the zone before your pattern springs into action.

Once you have your starting point

Now take yourself through what happened from the starting point before the trigger occurred right the way through to the end. Every little detail…moment to moment.

Use these questions to give you greater clarity, insights and understanding as you visualise the situation and how it occurred:

– What am I thinking or saying to myself at this moment?

– How do I feel at this moment?

– What am I physically doing at this moment?

– How is the person reacting to me at this moment?

– What impact am I having on this person at this moment?

The sooner you do this after the event the more you will be able to remember easily.

The kind of responses that Sales Leaders share with me

– My breathing becomes fast and shallow

– I want to shout…What the hell were you thinking? What is wrong with you? …or similar

– My leg starts shaking under the desk

– I start tapping my pen on the desk

– I become distracted and start looking at my phone/emails

– I just want to tell them to…

– I start intimidating or bullying them to do what I want them to do

– I think they just say what they think I want to hear when I get like this

Now what?

Once you have uncovered what happens moment to moment you have the opportunity to change your pattern.

You will notice that certain triggers create specific patterns in you. When these triggers occur in the future, you’ll be more aware of them and can make different choices.

Think about each of your automatic patterns and ask yourself…What would I like to do instead?

This will prepare you for different actions when the trigger happens again.

It’s not easy and will take effort and determination to become your new automatic pattern but it’s so rewarding. When you change your unhelpful patterns you’ll begin to notice positive changes in your sales team and that is always a great thing!

Until next time,

Leigh 🙂