The Mental Edge in Selling. Tom Hopkins

       CHAPTER 1

       Why Don’t I Do What I Know I Should Do?

      “Why don’t I do what I know I should do?” Ask this question of yourself. Ask seriously because the answer controls your future. Until you start doing what you know you should do, you’re living under a law against success that you’ve imposed on yourself.

      Behind that question stands this challenge: “How can I cause myself to do what I know I should do?” I’ll soon tell you how, but first take time to understand the why.

      You’ve frequently asked yourself questions like the two above. Everyone in sales has, except the top producers (who are doing what they know they should do) and the defeated (who’ve trained themselves not to ask anymore). You’re not a member of that last group for many important reasons I can’t know about, and for one that I do: You’re reading these words. This means that you’ve opened your mind to new and possibly disturbing ideas that you’re willing to change your way of doing things whenever you discover a change that’ll help.

      When you began your new selling career, what did you have a big supply of?

      Enthusiasm.

      Do you remember? Burning desire. Excitement. The feeling of Watch out, world, here I come. Now that I’ve got this terrific opportunity in sales, there’s no limit to what I can do.

      Yes, you had enthusiasm and desire then. Yes, you were eager and excited about what you were going to do. No problem getting out of bed in the morning: You were raring to go. You had everything necessary for success except one item: knowledge. You simply didn’t know what you were doing. But that was okay; your enthusiasm made up for it.

      Then what happened?

      Some months passed. You learned your product, your way around the territory, how accounts are found, what the challenges are. But while you gathered that knowledge, what happened to your enthusiasm?

      It dwindled a bit, didn’t it? But your product is still as fresh to new customers today as it was the day you started—it’s just not fresh to you anymore. You’ve had time not only to see the negatives that every industry, company, and product has, you’ve also had time to dwell on them, time to let these negatives influence your actions.

      Your gain of knowledge merely matched your loss of enthusiasm, and balanced your performance out to about average—far below your potential. Make no mistake about it: Under your skin a Champion is struggling to get out. A front-runner. A big earner. A high flier.

      So now you know what to do, but you aren’t doing it. Why? In most organizations, lack of the specific product knowledge required for that sales position isn’t the main issue among the salespeople who’ve been there for several months. It probably isn’t for you, either. Motivating yourself to do what you already know you should do is the main challenge.

      Why is this true?

      Because what you should do is not what you want to do. If it was, you’d be doing it.

      Now we’ve come to the cutting edge:

      Why don’t you want to do what you know you should do?

      The reason you don’t is that you’re in conflict with yourself. This conflict comes about because the push forward of your wants and needs can’t overcome the push backward of your fears and anxieties.

      A bit later, we’re going to study these wants and needs of yours in detail. Wants and needs are motivators, and everyone feels them. We’re also going to take a close look at the de-motivators that everyone also feels. When you feel a de-motivator, you feel fear or anxiety—which is why de-motivators are so powerful. They can dry your mouth, make your knees bang together like loose shutters in the wind, and light a fire in your stomach—or they can work in soft and subtle ways to kill your action. They’re powerful, all right. That’s why we’re going to study them.

      Almost all success-seeking people have been torn by this conflict at some point in their careers, and most of us live with it all our active lives. Perhaps we can’t eliminate this ongoing battle. But we can decide whether we’ll lose every day, lose usually, win usually, or win every time. We can’t, of course, win every sale. Forces beyond our control will cost us a sale now and then. That’s okay. What isn’t okay is to constantly lose out to our same old unresolved fears and anxieties.

      Think about that. In the privacy of your own thoughts, consider whether this conflict isn’t the chief obstacle to your being an outstanding success. Not lack of ability, not lack of product knowledge, but simply nonperformance of what you know you should do because of conflict.

      Resolving these fears and anxieties is surprisingly easy when you know how to do it. The first requirement is to admit that you’re like everyone