Feedback Form
Home Features Mastermind Forums About Advertise Blog Network Contact Be An Author

A World of Possibility

A World of Possibility

When I started my sales career over 25 years ago, I worked for a small company selling telephone answering equipment. Hard to believe it but in those days I had to explain to prospects what the equipment was for and why they might want to use it.

The company I worked for got business in several different ways. First each of the 4 sales people handled incoming calls and also made calls to people he/she thought could use the equipment. The company advertised so sometimes people called in to inquire about the products we offered. Finally the manufacturers of the equipment sent the company names of people (leads) who called the manufacturer because they were interested in the equipment.

No one particularly liked making cold calls so if we could get an incoming call we took it hoping it was a potential customer. Cold calling was part of the job however so I learned to do it in a way that made it a game. One of the other sales people really hated making the calls so he very rarely made any.

Instead of calling this fellow would complain to whoever was available that the company didn’t provide good leads, that the company should advertise more so people would know what the equipment was, and that the company should move its location to a high traffic mall so we would get walk in traffic. (We were located in a building that housed the mattress factory of the parents of the owner!)

Needless to say he didn’t make many sales but it always struck me that he truly believed the problem was with the company not with himself.

Jack Canfield in his book The Success Principles says, “If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings-everything!”

The fellow may have been right about the company and its support (or lack of support) of sales but he couldn’t change that. It didn’t help any of us that he continually complained about the leads, location, and lack of advertising. He needed to take responsibility for his own sales process and begin to think about possibilities not problems.

Instead the focus on the problems put him in a negative mood so that he was somewhat snide when he talked to potential customers. Needless to say they rarely bought from him. His negative mood made him totally unattractive to the rest of us. I knew that I couldn’t talk with him too often or I would also get caught up in his negativity.

My colleague’s conversation is what Ben Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander call “downward spiral talk”. They say in the book The Art of Possibility, “Focusing on the abstraction of scarcity, downward spiral talk creates an unassailable story about the limits to what is possible and tells us compellingly how things are going from bad to worse.”

Obviously it would be good to stop that kind of talk-if you can. This can be difficult especially if you are paid to find the problems with something. Lawyers look for holes in the other person’s case, engineers look for problems to solve, and accountants often look for ways the numbers don’t work.

There is energy in finding what is wrong with something. The key is to use that energy even if the use is to write a report or argue a case. My colleague needed to take the energy of his negativity and use that energy to find innovative ways to make the job interesting. That is what I had done when I made a game of it. Getting stuck in the negativity makes you a victim of circumstances rather than being 100% responsible for your own results.

Take Action:


Where are you being negative? Are you aware of a downward spiral talk in your work? How can you use the energy of the talk in a different way?

Read the Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.

Take a look at this book and website. This will give you another perspective on the issue of negativity: Julie Norem’s The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Using Defensive Pessimism to Harness Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak

David Caruso and Peter Solovay in their book The Emotionally Intelligent Manager give these four key emotional skills:

Identifying Emotion: Emotions contain critical information and data.

Using Emotion: Different emotions help our thinking in different ways.

Understanding Emotion: Emotions follow a logical pattern, if you know how to look at them.

Managing Emotion: You cannot be effective without the wisdom of emotions.





A World of Possibility - To learn more about this author, visit Alvah Parker's Website.

Like this article? Share it with your friends

Article Feedback
 Article Feedback No article feedback found.
  Leave Your Feedback
article feedback

Article Feedback
Kim Castle
With nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website

John Alexander
John has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center.
I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website

Dave Kurlan
Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website


To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us.

About The Author


Alvah Parker
(Visit Alvah's Website) Alvah Parker is a Practice Advisor (The Attorneys’ Coach) and a Career Changers’ Coach as well as publisher of "Parker’s Points", an email tip list and "Road to Success", an ezine. Subscribe now to these free monthly publications at her website http://www.asparker.com/samples.htm l Alvah Parker began her career as a high school chemistry teacher. She later transition to a sales career at AT&T. As a Sales Professional at AT&T for 15 years she was elected to the prestigious Counsel of Leaders for the top 3% of the sales force. After leaving AT&T she transitioned into a coaching career and also volunteers as a SCORE Business Counselor where she advises and counsels small business owners. Parker’s Value Program© enables her clients to find their own way to work that is more fulfilling and profitable. Her clients are attorneys and people in transition who want to find work that is in line with their own life purpose. Alvah is found on the web at http://www.asparker.com. She may also be reached at 781-598-0388.

Alvah Parker is a Platinum author on EvanCarmichael.com
About The Author

View Author Blog
View Author Blog

View Author Video
View Author Video

Free Downloads


Alvah Parker's

Complete
List Of
Business-Coach
Articles

Name
Email
If you enjoyed this article, get Alvah Parker's Complete List of Business-Coach Articles For FREE!

More Alvah Parker
10 Leadership Tips for Lawyers
3 Lessons On Making More Money that Your Mother Never Taught You
10 Ideas To Help You Create A Vision Of Your Ideal Work life
Ten Locations for Quiet Reflection for Busy Professionals
Establishing Trust How to Build Relationships and Make Them Work For You
10 Tips For More Effective Networking
Getting in Shape
Time Management Time for Quiet Reflection
Are You Doing Meaningful Work
Career Success 3 Surprisingly Simple Ways to Bullet Proof Your Career
Free Downloads


 
 
 


Evan Elite Authors
Kim Castle  
David Barr  
Joe Dager  
Evan Elite Authors

Become An Author
Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details.
Become An Author

Evan's Latest Video
Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media
Evan's Latest Video

Business Opportunities
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"

How to Start An Online Business

Click Here To Learn More
Business Opportunities



Evan's Newsletter
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
Name:
Email:
Evan`s Newsletter

Free Downloads
Webinar Plan Icon Webinar Plan
Networking Is The Future Icon Networking Is The Future
Attract Desired Careers Icon Attract Desired Careers
Emotions Drive Behavior Icon Emotions Drive Behavior
Purpose of Value Propositions Icon Purpose of Value Propositions
Free Downloads - Complete List

Entrepreneur Tools and Guides
Top 50 Marketing Blogs
Top 50 Marketing Blogs
Top Marketing Blogs of 2009
 
Top 50 Political Blogs
Top 50 Political Blogs
Top Political Blogs of 2009
 
Entrepreneur Tools and Guides

SEO For Africa
SEO For Africa
Adwoa Tawiah Offinsu, Ghana,
Adwoa Tawiah
Offinsu, Ghana
SEO For Africa

If I Were A Startup...
Jeff Roick, $1.4 to $6.5 Mil in 2 years
Jeff Roick
$1.4 to $6.5 Mil in 2 years
Razor Suleman, $143k to $5.4 Mil in 5 years
Razor Suleman
$143k to $5.4 Mil in 5 years
If I Were A Startup... - Complete List

Famous Entrepreneurs
Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Steel
Andrew Carnegie
Carnegie Steel
Benjamin Franklin, P. Gazette
Famous Entrepreneurs - Complete List

Entrepreneur Advice
Paul Kedrosky, Venture Capitalist
Paul Kedrosky
Venture Capitalist
Seth Godin, Ideavirus Author
Seth Godin
Ideavirus Author
Entrepreneur Advice - Complete List

Popular Articles
(Premium Authors)

     THE BRAND AS JIHAD
By Stanley Moss
     2005 Global Brand Letter
By Stanley Moss
     Trekking in Andalucia
By Stanley Moss

Have A Suggestion?
Toronto Salsa Classes / Toronto Salsa Lessons Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
Have A Suggestion?

More Evan Carmichael
More Information