During a recent training session with a sales team, a participant described me as being “more assertive” than he was. When I asked what he meant, he responded by saying that he wasn’t as assertive in making upsell or cross-sell recommendations to clients.

I’ve heard these kinds of comments before from sales teams I work with, and I suggested that we, as sales professionals, need to be careful how we label ourselves.

Thinking you’re not assertive, for example, could (and likely will) result in your not being that assertive.

If your ability to increase the value of a sale relies on offering upsell options or cross-sell options, then don’t you owe it to the customer to share what these options are? If this makes you “assertive,” then so be it.

My point is this:

What we tell ourselves informs our behaviors.

What We Tell Ourselves Informs Our Behaviors

My youngest son plays hockey, and for the longest time he would say before a game, “I likely won’t get a goal today, Dad.” My response was, “Well, if that’s what you think will happen, it’s likely the case. But isn’t it just as easy to think ‘I’m going to try and get a goal today?’”

Hint: It is just as easy.

Look, selling is challenging work.

As a result, we owe it to ourselves to do everything we can to make our job easy.

Thinking negatively, or letting negative ideas enter our mind, doesn’t help.

If you were to wake up in the morning and tell yourself, “I won’t make a sale today” and then every time you think about your day, just repeat this forcibly in your mind, what do you think would happen?

Well, for starters, you likely wouldn’t make a sale. And most likely you’d fall into a sales slump, be upset at the end of the day, and dread trying to make a sale the next day.

Truthfully, I don’t suggest you try this.

Replace Negative Thoughts With Positive Thoughts

What I do suggest you try is every time a negative thought enters your mind, you replace it with a positive one.

Let’s assume you will make a sale; you will have a good day; you will close that big deal.

You’ll find that the effort to think a positive thought is just as easy as thinking a negative one.

My point is simple:

Negative thinking doesn’t belong anywhere in sales.

If that means if your peers or others call you “hungry” or “assertive,” so be it.

But you owe it to yourself to feel good about selling, and to give yourself every possible opportunity to make the sale.

Changing your sales mindset is the first step.