The Respected Salesperson: How to change your mind before you change minds

By Arishma Singh

When someone tells you, 'Don't be salesy!', it almost feels like they are throwing a swear word at you.

But why is this so?

Sales is much more complex than number crunching, reading scripts, or having coffees with clients. For too long, we've seen sales as something external to us. As salespeople, we spend enormous amounts of time ho

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thrive With EFT Pty Ltd
• Release date: Mar 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922764935

Arishma Singh

With over 20 years of corporate experience, working with major brands such as Nielsen Media, American Express, Google Australia, Pivot Software and Experian Australia, Arishma has been known as an award-winning top performer, a 'pocket rocket' and a woman to watch. A globally certified and accredited EFT practitioner, Arishma is passionate about facilitating change for her clients by working with their mind, psyche, and identity. Now an established Keynote Speaker, Author, and Edupreneur, Arishma Singh leads Thrive With EFT to empower her clients to overcome inner blocks and achieve life-changing transformation.

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CHAPTER ONE

Where’s the respect?

When you are content to be simply yourself and

don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Lao Tzu

When someone tells you, ‘Don’t be salesy!’, it almost feels like they are throwing a swear word at you.

But why is this so?

One of the authors who explained it best is Daniel Pink. In his book To Sell is Human, he states that:

While we understand that sales involves prospecting, pitching, persuading, challenging and cajoling, which are important facets of any human transaction, yet, the human that is seen as performing a sales function is often described to be doing something icky, dodgy, slippery, trickery, or worse, deceitful. Over the years, people in sales have often been seen as intellectual lightweights and dodgy characters. Even though 9% of us work in direct sales, some view it as the white-collar equivalent of cleaning toilets. The truth is, however, we are all involved in sales.

The reality is that sales is a highly emotional calling. It is a demanding, high-stress, high-pressure, and anxiety-triggering job. After all, sales professionals must persist through rejections and are required to pick themselves up with a smile on their face – day after day! And without sales, an organisation cannot prosper.

Yet, where is the respect for sales people?

I have to confess that I did not have respect for my entry into a career as a sales professional, when I first ‘fell’ into it during the Global Financial Crisis. I did not recognise the value of this role because I did not associate it with the expensive degree I was holding, nor was it what my parents had hoped for me to become, which was a lawyer. I humbly recognise now after two decades of being in the corporate world, that the sales profession has provided me with immense growth, professional experiences, travel abroad, connections with senior stake-holders at multinational corporations, leadership opportunities – and not to forget crazy commissions!

Does anyone ever say, ‘When I grow up, I will get into sales?’ Unless your parents have been successful in sales, it is rare to meet people who knew they always wanted to be in sales. The majority just fell into sales.

So I invite you to be upfront and honest: what do you think of your job title?

If you tell somebody you’re a doctor, you command automatic respect.

But if you tell them you’re a salesperson…

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No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Imagine that you are at a BBQ and have the opportunity to meet a group of new people. Somebody you don’t recognise walks up to you and the standard ‘getting to know you’ conversation starts. Inevitably, the question about what you do for a living will come up.

Do you immediately say ‘sales’?

Or do you instead say something along the lines of ‘I’m an Account Relationship Manager with…’ or ‘I work for Company XYZ…’?

Now, think back to some of the conversations you’ve had with friends about your work. What did they say when you told them you work in sales? At best, you might have gotten a nod and some small talk. But the more common response is to be hit with insults likening you to a sleazy used car salesperson, proving that salespeople do not have a good reputation.

Bazza L, a senior and experienced sales manager from a national media organisation, mentioned that even within an organisation that backs sales people, there is still animosity between sales and other departments. It’s simply because in that company, salespeople get more limelight and benefits, such as Friday afternoon celebrations where people from sales get kudos or vouchers and wins. But those who produce or service the product resent those in sales, referring to them as ‘those lazy bastards’.

Have you ever thought of asking yourself the question…

Where is the respect in sales?

Why do people instantly have a negative perception of sales, or use terms like shark, dodgy, sleazy, cheap car salesperson, liar, etc.?

And if you don’t believe this perception exists, I encourage you to ask your family and friends what they think about ‘salespeople’. You may or may not be surprised to hear some of the stereotypes about how those in sales are simply those who have the ‘gift of the gab’, are sneaky, manipulative, pushy and just looking to make their quotas.

Contrary to the common perception, sales is NOT about doing or saying whatever you can think of to sell a product. As a salesperson, you are an influencer and persuader, who is an expert at convincing people to take action that is in their best interest. We are in the busi­ ness of changing our clients’ minds. But before you can do this, you must first change your own mind. To change another person’s mind to a new way of thinking, you must first overcome your own perceptions of what a salesperson is and can be.

My point?

Everybody is a salesperson, whether they realise it or not. Humans are always negotiating, pitching ideas, influencing, and changing people’s perceptions to convince them to buy into our ideas. From getting a raise or promotion at work, to landing a first date, or even getting your children to eat their vegetables, all of these desired outcomes spring from our need to sell. Kids sell every day, trying to influence their parents into buying them the latest toy or letting them stay out late. Couples sell their ideas and selves to each other. Even in the workplace, beyond the interactions you have with clients, you’re engaged in a constant dance of sales with your employer – selling your capabilities while your employer sells the attractiveness of the company.

And yet, we’re all weary of salespeople precisely because we know that their main purpose is to influence. To influence means to change somebody’s mind so that they think differently to how they always have. However, our brains are hardwired to avoid anything that will take us out of our comfort zone, which is why we perceive salespeople as such a threat. They’re trying to change our way of thinking so the limbic part of our brain, by default and often subconsciously, fights back in an effort to protect us from a change it wasn’t expecting.

Sales is much more complex than number crunching, reading scripts, or having coffees with clients. For too long, we’ve seen sales as something external to us. As salespeople, we spend enormous amounts of time honing our skills and figuring out how to close effectively so we get more ‘yeses’ from clients. This is what we think will make us good salespeople.

And to some extent, it is.

But, in only focusing on the external work, we do not give ourselves the opportunity to realise our real potential. You can see this in top athletes, performers, and artists. They don’t just ace their external game. They also become masters of the complex inner game that truly underpins their performance.

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Tennis is 90% mental and 10% physical.

Roger Federer

This is the part of sales that I am passionate about – the inner mental game – and I am inviting you to lean in and take a journey with me. The internal work that must take place for you, will move you beyond this perception of a salesperson. If you want to differentiate yourself, it’s time you become the Respected Salesperson. For you to become that, you first need to change your own mind, before you seek to change the minds of others. This is where you will notice your very own genius will come forth.

This all starts when you develop your understanding of what respect truly is.

The word ‘respect’ comes from the Latin word ‘respectus’. This means to look back at, consider and regard something. This is what I will be encouraging you to do in this book. Before you can influence, persuade, or change someone else’s mind, you must first reflect on yourself. You must find value in yourself as a talented individual who has something to offer to the world. You must trust your innate intelligence, that little voice inside you, to guide you. Knowing oneself comes from developing clarity and conviction. Too often, we silence the little voice inside because we’re too focused on day-to-day mental chatter. It is when we take time for reflection that we finally hear this voice and begin to respect ourselves.

You must respect yourself before others will respect you.

This is a process that I know all too well. I was fixated on striving hard through my early 20s, because I inherited that belief system from my parents that I must become a top performer. I was unconsciously taught to rely on my skills, talents, diligence, practice, preparation, concentration, and long hours of hard work. This is all I knew.

I was so caught up in working hard that I could not think of an alternative way of sustaining success. To me, everything was about the euphoria of chasing deals and crippling bouts of self-doubt, despite being on top of the leaderboard. I put extreme pressure on myself, constantly stressing myself out and losing sleep as a result.

I had a problem.

I needed to prove myself all the time. It was relentless. 

This simply was not sustainable. I had to find a better way.

Let me ask you this:

What if it were possible for you to be a successful salesperson without needing to try 400%, doubt your efforts and question your skills, abilities and experience?

What if you can be respected for how you conduct yourself with your peers, clients, management and loved ones?

What if there were a way you could live in a greater balance of life and still take home increased commission?

What might that look like for you? And what would you be prepared to do to make that happen?

Ultimately, this is what I achieved when I developed my methodology. The notion of THRIVE began making sense to me, when I started recognising my own old patterns of desperation, working hard to the point of burnout to retain my ‘high performance’ standard.

When I use the word THRIVE, I mean to attain success in a sustainable way.

And you will learn the details of the THRIVE model I have developed as well as the use of a mind body tool called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) that helps bring that model to life.

Throughout this book, we will explore the often-overlooked concepts of trust, relationships, and how sales fits into the greater picture of our lives.

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The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Theodore Roosevelt

Respect is the Missing Ingredient in Strong Relationships

Imagine this.

Peter and Mary got to know each other and found that they enjoyed each other’s company. The seed of a relationship soon began to form, but there are barriers that they had to overcome for their relationship to bear fruit. Peter made it clear to Mary that he has issues with commitment, which she thought she understood, so they continued to go on dates and grow closer. But over time, Mary began to convince herself that she can change Peter’s mind and help him to get rid of his hang-ups about commitment. To achieve this goal, she created an environment in which Peter felt safe to share more of himself with her. And coincidentally, that space also happened to showcase what she considered to be the most attractive aspects of her personality. So, Mary poured all her energy into developing this relationship. Soon enough, there were signs that showed that it was working!

Peter grew to trust Mary and entered a relationship with her. He fell in love with her authentic self and the couple had a solid friendship to serve as the base of their relationship. Mary began to believe the deal is done and that Peter is committed.

Unfortunately, this is only her fantasy.

The reality is that five years go by and all they really had was a friendship. Peter showed his interest, genuine care, and attention. Mary, however, took all these signs as signs of commitment – she thought that, sooner or later, he’d pop the question. But that didn’t happen. And when she mustered the courage to ask for the commitment she thought she deserved, she was met with distance, silence, and abandonment.

Mary was devastated. And yet, she still believed that the relationship could work. She thought that if she gave him time, he’d realise that he truly wanted to commit to her and that they could have their happily ever after. But that didn’t happen because Peter did not get in touch. The distance and time between them grew as a result.

Two years went by, and Mary still had strong feelings for Peter. And one day, she ran into a mutual acquaintance who told her that Peter had since been married. He finally committed, but not to Mary who worked so hard to earn his trust. Mary began feeling confused and angry. After all, she spent five years of her life creating that safe environment for him, doing all of the right things to earn his commitment. Yet, two years later, somebody else ‘won’ it in half the time.

And therein lies the issue that existed all along.

When Mary looked back, she saw his lack of respect in a hundred little things – in the way that he made assumptions about her, failure to communicate, ignoring her, hiding the ‘real’ truth and not acknowledging that she had wasted her time.

It is this mistake that brings us back to sales.

How often have you worked really hard over a long sales cycle, building a trusting relationship with your client, only to find yourself in a situation where the client has gone missing in action, not returning your calls, and not replying to your emails or text? You feel embarrassed that you have told your managers and peers during your sales team meetings how strong your relationship is. What’s more, you’re certain that the deal will come through because you have done everything right. The confusion, anger and frustration are difficult to work through during this period. Then, you find out after a few weeks or months that the client has chosen a completely different provider – one that you didn’t even know about.

Where is the respect?

Over and over again, I see salespeople focus on earning trust before they command respect. And fair enough, trust has its place. As salespeople we have been taught to become the ‘trusted advisor’ – and of course we must do everything we can to ensure that we are considered trustworthy. However, trust does not guarantee a sale. It can often be a one-way street. Mutual respect however, embeds a better foundation to have a sales relationship built upon. Both parties are then considered equal. In an equal relationship, there comes a time that both parties are able to showcase their disagreements and have difficult conversations. It is not possible to do that, when a relationship has a power imbalance.

It is in these moments when respect trumps trust in a relationship. Please do not get me wrong, trust is an inherent part of a sales relationship. What I am proposing here is that you first kick off a relationship with respect and build trust over time. Challenging a client requires you to have respect for yourself first and foremost. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter how much the client trusts you. They will not follow the course of action you’re trying to influence them towards because you’re missing the respect needed to influence in the first place.

I’m not saying that trust isn’t an important ingredient in relationships. What I’m saying is that so many of us miss the fact that respect must exist for trust to be leveraged in a way that allows us to influence others. If we have others treat us with respect, and we treat them with respect in kind, that is the first step towards building trust and true camaraderie.

True trust takes time and effort to build.

Respect can be commanded instantly by creating the right boundaries.

You can command respect through your tone, energy, eye contact, body language, appearance, demeanour and the words you use in your first interaction with somebody. Trust is a character judgement that gets formed over time, even though our guts often immediately act as indicators of who we can and can’t trust. In sales, speed is of the essence. We live in a time where clients are all too happy to jump from one company to another at the drop of a hat. I believe that to be efficient and effective, and to create sustainable relationships, respect must be the first priority.

It’s Okay to Hear ‘No’

As salespeople, we’re sometimes taught that we should not take ‘no’ for an answer. But before we can influence our clients and work on their objections, we need to look within our own objections, fears and doubts. This is something that the sales industry is lacking cur­ rently – the ability to conduct inner reflection.

Sometimes, as sales people, we get too focused on hearing a ‘yes’ in order to close a sale or generate an opportunity. A Respected Salesperson primes themselves to listen to the ‘no’ and understand why, all the while operating with the knowledge that not all sales opportunities can close. If a salesperson is not stressed or anxious by the ‘no’, they already are on the path of becoming a Respected Salesperson.

The simple fact is that chasing every prospect is not a sustainable approach. And yet, salespeople do it anyway because, deep down inside, they fear rejection. We’re not prepared to hear the word ‘no’ without taking it as a personal rejection. Yet, the reality is that a ‘no’ from a client is very rarely a personal thing. It’s simply real time evidence that we’re not yet providing a solution to the problem they believe that they have. Yet once we know they do have a problem that can be solved, it is just a matter of time and empathy before we place ourselves in a position to understand it. The task then is just to keep digging and uncovering, while remaining curious.

But here’s what I want you to understand:

What makes a salesperson ineffective is not because they hear the word ‘no’. Rather, it’s because of their programming to keep chasing even if they know it’s impossible for the prospect to say ‘yes’. They have this irrational fear that hearing prospects say ‘no’ means that there is a problem with them as a person.

If a salesperson hasn’t fully developed their mind, which involves developing respect for themselves amongst many other things, they will become too attached to the idea that sales is all about winning. This shows in their emotional vocabulary and behaviour. You have to get a ‘yes’ or you are somehow a failure. That mindset is what leads to salespeople taking rejection so hard that they struggle to move on from it. Instead of focusing their energies on a prospect who’s more likely to say ‘yes’, they fixate on the person who said ‘no’. For the salesperson, it has become personal.

The Respected Salesperson is more resilient than this. Much like elite athletes, they take failure in their stride and continue the pursuit. But rather than chasing after the person who said ‘no’, they change course and move onto the person who might say ‘yes’. An elite athlete who loses a game may analyse what went wrong and adjust. However, by the time the next game comes, they’re completely focused on the performance to come rather than the performance of the past.

This is why the elite stay at the top of their professions and achieve sustainable levels of high performance. They know that it’s okay to fail. They can’t win every single time. But instead of dwelling on the losses, they learn the lessons of failure and move onto the next game.

Respected Salespeople create clear boundaries for themselves that both they and their clients’ respect. Without those boundaries, they will be open to being taken advantage of. They will chase people when they’re not ready and earn a reputation for being pushy. The result is that prospects become even more likely to say ‘no’, culminating in stress, anxiety, and burnout for the salesperson.

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If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same … [then] Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

The Burnout Syndrome

In 2018, The World Health Organization (WHO) updated its definition of burnout in the workplace in the eleventh iteration of the International Classification of Diseases. It defines burnout as a mental syndrome that results from increased levels of stress in the workplace that isn’t properly managed. The symptoms of burnout may sound familiar, with the WHO noting ‘feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy,’ as the key issues.

Think about this definition in the context of the traditional sales paradigm of relentlessly chasing sales. When you keep hearing the word ‘no’, your stress levels build. You start to feel ineffective in your role, which contributes to the exhaustion and mental distancing that the WHO points out. You operate under the constant cloud of stress, which produces the stress hormone cortisol. This hormone drives the conduction