Have you ever seen this picture of a glacier? I don’t mean just the “mountaintop” that juts out of the water – I mean the whole thing in its entirety. What you see in this picture is a small floating bit of ice jutting out of the water. Beneath that lies the majority of the glacier. We can only see the top 10%, and the other 90% lies below the surface – a massive, behemoth ice rock that, obviously, controls everything about where the top 10% goes.
This illustration has been used in psychology to explain what the conscious vs subconscious mind looks like. We only see the 10% on the top – that’s our conscious mind. The other 90% makes up the rest of the mind, and it is, quite obviously, far more influential in the direction we take.
Now I am sure you’re asking “What do glaciers have to do with sales?”
It’s all about the subconscious mind – and it’s far more powerful than you may think.
If you’ve heard me speak or if you’ve read “Selling With Intention,” you have heard the term Neuro-Linguistic Programming. This is an innovative field based on the assumption that humans perceive their own reality and, most importantly, have the ability to influence it.
In short, it means you deliberately control your own reality. In the 1960’s, a book called Psycho Cybernetics was written about this very thing. Only now do we have the technology to prove that those theories are true. It’s a fascinating field of study and it applies to all areas of life, including – and especially – sales.
What is the general basis of these theories?
That we get what we intend to. Yes, that’s pretty much it. Much like the glacier, we are controlled by our subconscious mind in ways we cannot always comprehend or see.
However, don’t misunderstand and think that we are simply slaves to the whims of our subconscious mind. Quite the opposite.
In reality, we intentionally feed our subconscious through our conscious mind. Our subconscious mind does not have a filter, nor does it question like our conscious mind does. It simply receives the information we give it, and directs our actions accordingly. That determines the direction we go as well as the results we get.
This is all fascinating bookish psychology, but in the real world, what does this look like in a face to face sales interaction?
Simply put, when you go to a meeting with a prospect, you will get exactly what you intend to. If you intend to make a sale, everything about that interaction will subconsciously communicate that to your prospect, and they will pick up on that. It’s very likely that in that situation, you’ll close a sale. If your intention is, say, building a relationship so that you can come back to them at a later date, that is exactly what is going to happen. If you go in thinking that selling is hard and they aren’t going to buy, you won’t make that sale.
You attract success to yourself by being intentional about it.
I see this principle confirmed again and again in my interactions with clients. Many times they don’t even know it is happening until I point it out. Once their intentions change, their results change. It’s as simple as that.
So now this begs the question: what are your intentions?
Are you going to your sales meetings intending to walk out with a sale?
Or are you going to your meetings thinking “I bet I’m going to be disappointed again”?
Simply choose the one you want to feed your subconscious mind, and your entire being will respond accordingly. Your body language, words, and conversation will line up with what you are telling your mind to do.
Your job is to make sure you’re telling it the right thing.
