5 Affirmations for sales success

You tell yourself stories all the time, why not tell better stories, by using affirmations for sales success?

Do you have a song that inspires you? One that cultivates a deeper sense of purpose and power? Mine is One Moment in Time by Whitney Houston. I know, go ahead and laugh. But here are the lyrics:

Each day I live
I want to be
A day to give
The best of me
I’m only one
But not alone
My finest day
Is yet unknown

If I’m feeling especially nervous before a speaking gig, I listen to it on repeat. It makes me feel unstoppable.

If you could choose the stories you tell yourself, what would you say?

Our monkey-mind can sometimes go on a wild joyride, making up crazy stories with no basis in reality. Pure fiction. If you get swept along on the ride and believe those fictions, your emotions and mental well-being go along with them, making you feel nervous, demotivated, self-conscious or paralysed. It’s unfortunate but the negative voices usually scream louder than the positive ones.

Good news Is, you can choose the stories you tell yourself by using affirmations. Affirmations are words and phrases you repeat to protect the mind. It stems from the Latin affirmare, which means declaration, solid assurance.

Why are affirmations so powerful?

Most people will never admit to being influenced by external stimuli; it questions the strength of their willpower and therefore challenges their ego. But the fact is, we are. Psychologists call it priming.

In an experiment written up in the American Psychological Association, researchers gave a math test to groups of men and women. They told one group that a math test does not show gender differences but told the other group that it does. In the first group, the women performed equally to men. But in the second group, the one primed for gender differences, women scored significantly lower than the men.

Take advantage of your mind’s loophole

You too can use priming to intentionally direct your emotions to your advantage. French psychologist Emilie Coue pioneered the idea of self-affirmations after noticing some patients improved health outcomes when given positive affirmations. In his seminal book Self Mastery Through Conscious Auto-suggestion, Coue says, “We constantly give ourselves unconscious suggestions, all we have to do is give ourselves conscious ones.” He says it works because “it’s impossible to think of two things at once.” Try it. You can’t. Every thought occupying our mind becomes true for you and turns into action.

“Affirmations are bullsh*t!”

Yes, they are, if you’re saying words you don’t believe. That’s counterproductive and only serves to reinforce your current position. Using affirmations that are believable, however, can and does help. Maybe you consider yourself terrible at sales. Something like, “I am a great salesperson” will not feel true at all, and it is your feeling that the statement is false that will drive your actions. But what about something like “Everyday my sales skills improve with practice”? Such an idea is conceivable and is a much better affirmation.

Sounds crazy, but it works

You’re already telling yourself stuff all the time, stories and ideas that don’t serve you. Why not change them to more empowering stories? And besides, when you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them.

You’re already telling yourself stories all the time. Why not tell yourself empowering stories? Click To Tweet

“But this won’t change anything”

True, saying them won’t magically create a flood of new clients, opportunities, or [fill-in-the-blank] tomorrow. But it does have the power to change how you think. When you change how you think, you change beliefs. When you change beliefs, you change your motivation. When you increase your motivation, you take bigger, bolder, action, when you otherwise would do nothing.

A Converted cynic

My wife was one of the most cynical people I know. She thought affirmations were BS but does them anyway because she’s open minded and married to me (she says, Miss la la la). She writes affirmations about being a renowned author. It doesn’t mean a publishing contract flies in the door tomorrow, but since doing them regularly, she finds she’s more consistent in writing down her ideas (for blogs and stories) and fleshing them out than before. These ideas motivate her to finish her novel sooner so she can get cracking on new ones and create published blog content that is more likely to attract attention (because she hates social media).

The power of affirmations for new business

If you do the same thing you did yesterday, think the way you did yesterday, you get the same results. It’s only when you act and behave differently that you get different results. If you want different results, you have to do something different, and it’s born from the thoughts you think.

In an experiment published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a mock negotiation was played out by 88 MBA students. They were split into groups and all were given a variety of materials. One group of buyers (the affirmation group) were told to spend five minutes writing self-affirmations “about the meaning and value of your most important positive traits and abilities”. Another group of buyers (the non-affirmation control group) were told to write the relevance and importance of their least important value. The sellers were also instructed to reflect on their least important traits and abilities.

Gaining the upper hand

The results? The buyers in the affirmation group achieved a better outcome and a lower purchase price than the non-affirmation group. Also, the affirmation group made the first offer 57% of the time, compared to 30% of the time for the non-affirmation control group. Making the first offer puts you in a more powerful position when negotiating. results show that “self-affirmations reduced power-threat effects”, which is critical because threats reduce the efficiency of your working memory, an important faculty in a negotiation scenario.

(For more on negotiation tips, listen to my interview with world leading negotiation expert and all round lovely person, William Ury)