Now we're going to talk about the one factor that more than any other factor in life will determine your health, your happiness, your success, your income, and most of all your success as a sales professional, the factor that is more important than anything else, which I've gone through my entire life to the point where I realized that this is the key to success and all the other accomplishments, we really found that there is a one to one relationship between how much you sell and your self-concept. There is a one to one relationship between how much you sell and everything that you do in life, for example, there is a relationship between your self-concept, which by the way is entirely subjective. In other words, your self-concept is given by your thoughts about reality and not by reality itself. Anything that you accept as true becomes part of your subconscious reality and so you act as if it's true. But you have your own concept of how you dress, you have your own concept of what you do, and you have your own concept of how much you earn, what we find very interesting is that you cannot earn much less or more than what your self-concept of income level sets for you. We also found that you have a self-concept of how you sell, a concept of how you use your phone, how you present, how you focus, how you saw, a self-concept of how you manage your time how you get along with your boss your family you have a self-concept of how you drive how you play golf how good you are at sports public speaking coming up with humor etc. and that you always act in a manner consistent with your self-concept and your overall performance is determined by the average of your self-concept and by all of the areas of your life that you consider important and what does this mean for you it means that in order for you to increase your average performance in order for you to increase your income in order for the quality of your life to improve on the outside the law of correspondence you are going to have to change your self-concept by changing your thought systems you are going to have to feed yourself new information over and over again repeatedly until it becomes part of your beliefs now the core of your self-concept is your self-esteem your self-esteem is how you think about yourself really what you think about yourself more than anything else determines how you will perform on the outside and the best definition of self-esteem is simply this is how much you like yourself it is the single most important determinant of your behavior is how much you like yourself as a husband as a wife as a driver as a friend how much you like yourself as a salesman or a public speaker how much you like yourself or the feeling that forms your attitude towards yourself in each of these areas determines the level of effectiveness and what is amazing is how we are programmable machines how we can program ourselves with positive talk about ourselves what we call positive input if you repeat this phrase to yourself over and over again I love myself I love myself I love myself if you repeat this over and over again to yourself your overall self-concept goes up and by raising your overall self-concept you also raise your overall performance and your skills in all areas of your life simultaneously what we are telling you is that all high performing salespeople have high levels of self-esteem they love themselves and if you repeat to yourself over and over again I love myself I love myself I love myself and if you repeat this with emotion and enthusiasm you will put it in your subconscious mind and your subconscious mind will make your words your actions feelings your self-image and your performance consistent with this message I love myself we know that high performing entrepreneurs love themselves as salespeople high performing salespeople feel like winners and what is the feeling of being a winner when a person feels like a winner they love themselves a high performing salesperson makes sales and every time they make a sale their self esteem goes up because they feel good about themselves they feel like a winner and can build their self esteem systematically by repeating over and over again I love myself there is a direct relationship between self esteem and a positive mental attitude in fact we know that their outward attitude is a mere reflection of their inner self esteem a person who loves themselves is positive on the outside a person who doesn't love themselves is negative on the outside another thing we know is that likability goes hand in hand with self esteem one of the key factors or vital functions of sales is being likable and you can't love anyone more than yourself if you say I love myself I love myself I love myself you will soon love other people more and by loving other people more you will become a more likable person because they will like you more and finally health is directly related and appearance is also directly related to self esteem because the person who loves themselves always tries to act in the best way possible people who love themselves take care of themselves they worry about themselves physically inside and out and low self esteem is the main source of stress which is the main cause of psychosomatic illnesses in our society almost all stress comes from poor feelings of self esteem of not loving yourself stimulating yourself psychologically is one of the wisest things you can do to improve your own performance and how does this directly affect personal performance well very simple what is the main reason why people fail in their sales I will tell you what is the main reason number one that tops the list is fear of rejection the fear of rejection is the worst and only fear or factor that people who sell have to face is the fear that people will say no to you but you should know that the statistics are as simple as this they say that four out of five people that you talk to about your product or service no matter what the market or the competition is going to say no and if you have trouble hearing or no you chose a very interesting business to work in because in this business we hear the no's over and over and over and again and again and all the best salespeople are salespeople that have finally gotten to the point where the fears don't bother them because they don't take them personally but why is the fear of rejection such a powerful factor I'll tell you something according to a study from Columbia University the average salesperson only works 20% of the time the average salesperson works between one and one and a half hours a day and what I mean by working I mean being face to face with prospects those who can make buying decisions the average person only works an hour and a half a day and I've talked to a lot of sales managers and a lot of them say that they like salespeople that only work an hour and a half a day because most of them don't even work that long why is this why if your income is determined by the number of people you call and there is a direct relationship between income and contacts it's not true sales are not miraculous but your income is determined by the number of people you talk to why don't we talk to more people because we don't talk to twice as many people three times as many people for a very simple reason the fear of rejection the most wonderful thing is that there is an inverse relationship between the fear of rejection the higher your self esteem goes the lower your fear of rejection actually gets to the point where your self esteem reaches its highest level and your fears of failure go in exactly the opposite direction and when you overcome your fear of rejection in sales there is no limit to what you can accomplish and the best salespeople have reached the point where their fear of rejection no longer holds them back and we were saying that one of the things that the Columbia University study highlighted is that 50% of all sales attempts end without a close In other words, they end without the salesperson even asking the prospect to buy even once why does that happen because they're afraid of hearing the word they can't convince the prospect that this is the best product for them, the one with the most value, the best price, and the most useful but if you don't ask them frequently to buy they'll just fade away do you know how many prospects have reached the end of your presentation thinking I hope he doesn't ask me to buy because if he asks me to buy I said yes and what you do is say what you think with this it helps avoid the prospect saying no and leaving goes back to the office and says says to two salespeople who have returned to the office this Wow so I had a really good interview today and the other two salespeople will say Yeah I didn't sell anything today either you know why Because we all have to put down an order is this what you're looking for why don't you take it Okay just let me finish with this point and that is courage is the most important of the virtues in sales courage bravery not being afraid to want to go out and call people and talk about business is the critical and indispensable requirement for success in your field and the higher your self esteem the more you love yourself Likewise the more you care about yourself as a person the more energy more enthusiasm the more red and courage you will have self esteem develops just as physical well being develops we really say that in self esteem the value that you give to yourself in fact equates to mental well being and mental well being means feelings of self confidence optimism joy happiness health vitality energy etcetera everything that we can do to increase self esteem prepares you mentally just like everything you do to improve your physique makes you improve your external appearance and gives you more health and energy and these These are the steps that you can take the first step is to not forget this that action precedes feelings action precedes feelings if you feel a certain way high self esteem act that same way positive extroverted cheerful with lots of energy etcetera But also if you act a certain way even if you don't feel it the action will generate the feelings just like feelings generate actions also we call this the act of faking or assuming the role pretending that you already feel great pretending as if you were happy and cheerful and one of our expressions until you make it In other words if you're not feeling exactly right establish that you are a person who feels wonderfully good about themselves smile stand up straight change your physiology change your mood it's almost impossible to feel miserable when you 're standing upright smile keep your eyes open and pretend that you're happy and positive The second step in your formula for building your self esteem is to set clear goals And the reason for setting them is simply this when you have goals to achieve all the steps that you take that take you closer to your goals cause you to feel like a winner cause you to feel more like a winner and every time you feel like a winner your self-esteem rises if you don't have clear and specific goals no matter how much you can achieve you will never have that feeling of triumph that's why your goals must be defined in what it is that you want to obtain and the steps that you must take to achieve it and each time you achieve a goal you will have gone up one of the steps really. An important recommendation that I give you is to establish a list of victories and keep that list near your desk or in your portfolio if each time you achieve something that you believe is positive write it on your list of victories and each time you feel negative for any reason take out your list of victories and read it and count all the things you have done the interviews you had the sales you achieved the things that were good for you a list of victories is important to keep your self-esteem high stay positive and happy and continue selling and evaluating in an affective way with others regarding the goals you should have two types of them the income goals that is to say how much money you want to earn and you must have personal goals which are the things that you want to do as a result of being successful the income goals are called the what and the personal goals are called the why the following you can do in your formula to build your self esteem is to accept 100% of the responsibility if I want it to happen I'm going to have to fight one of the things you can do is ask yourself do I see myself as the owner of the company if I want it to happen I'm going to have to fight that's what those who are responsible for themselves say so there are no excuses and no blame if you don't like the way things are going it's your responsibility to change it if you can't change it it's your responsibility to accept them but without excuses or blame accept full responsibility for everything that you do and for everything that's the next thing you can do for your self esteem is to commit to Excellence commit to being the best and one of the most powerful ways to drive this into your subconscious mind to improve your self esteem is if you feel like blaming somebody say I am responsible I am the one responsible I am the one when you start thinking about Excellence tell yourself over and over again I am the best I am the best I am the best I know many sales people who have been able to work their way up to the top positions simply by programming their subconscious with this thought over and over again I am the best I am the best the best I am the best and another thing that can be said is I love my job I love my job I love my job I love my job and I am the best I love my job and I am the best by the way with respect to Excellence you will never be able to achieve what you are capable of achieving in life Unless you love your job enough to want to be the best at it if you don't make the commitment to be the best at whatever you do you will always be mediocre But as soon as you make the decision to become the best you will attract into your life a whole series of opportunities courses books videos series like this that will give you the tools you need to move into the upper ranks of a sales professional the next thing you can do is a mental practice all the top professionals do mental practices mental practice is simply the process of visualizing the results that you want it's simply the process of creating clear mental pictures in your brain of exactly what you want to achieve and the best time to do that is right before you go to sleep when you prepare to sleep at night nourish in your mind a clear mental picture of yourself performing at your best within the field of sales see yourself as someone strong confident relaxed positive and in complete control of the sales situation and your customer responding to you in a positive constructive cheerful optimistic manner and signing the order forms that you have filled out or whatever you need for your sale mental practice is a key characteristic of all top performers in the sales field another thing that you can do to improve your self esteem on an ongoing basis don't forget by the way regarding mental practice is that the subconscious mind is activated by mental images and this is what controls how you feel about yourself and the more positive mental images you feed into your subconscious mind the more positive and optimistic you will feel the next thing you can do is to create confidence within yourself or what we call faith it's interesting when we study thousands of good sales professionals we find that every single one of them has a very strong belief in themselves and in their ability to succeed they believe in themselves they believe in their companies they believe in their products and services they believe in the quality of their relationships with their customers and they have faith if they continue to act like this they will succeed and nothing will be able to stop them another important thing is integrity and honesty in a way integrity and honesty establish a route to your own success people will only buy from you if they feel that you treat them honestly people will only buy from you if they feel that you stand behind everything that you say people will only recommend you to others and will buy from you again if they think that you're being honest and here's a key part regarding integrity and it's this never expect to be successful without paying the price upfront never look for or expect get rich quick schemes never look for shortcuts never expect that the big deal is going to come your way respect the way you study prepare work on your sales presentation build your knowledge about the product and learn your craft never expect rewards without putting in the work never expect to find the easy way and I don't know what this advice is because I was young and I was always looking for the easiest way to avoid working anymore and I'll tell you this the easy money will be the hardest money you've ever earned and never look for a shortcut it's essential to honesty and integrity another key is to have overconfident hopes becoming what you might call a reverse paranoid a reverse paranoid and as you know a paranoid is a person who believes that the world is conspiring to harm you reverse paranoid point is a person who believes that the world is conspiring to do him or her good when you become a reverse paranoid you begin to look for the good in every situation you look for the valuable lesson in every sale that doesn't come to fruition in every call you see that there's a sale going on and everyone is planning for you to succeed sending you the guides sending you people sending you prospects sending you lessons sending you helpful tips sending you delays all set up to help you if you become a reverse paranoid you will have a trusting hopeful attitude you will always expect the best you will look for the good and the best you really do have a healthy personality to the degree that you look for the good in every situation that's for sure and finally practice this one of the most important things that I've learned is called the law of increasing returns it simply says that the more you are grateful for things the more there is to be grateful for the more you have to be grateful for the more you express gratitude for what you have in life the more gratitude there is to express so go thanks develop what is called an attitude of gratitude always look for something to be thankful for in all situations develop an attitude of gratitude develop the ability to give thanks for your health for your opportunities thank you for your friends for your partners for your clients and for all the parts that make up life the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the optimist says a glass is half full and the pessimist says it is half empty a person who practices the law of increasing returns a person who has the attitude of gratitude always looks for the good in all situations