What is the Secret to Happiness and How Does a Happy Mindset Improve Sales?
Coping with the emotional toll of missed opportunities and train-wreck sales meetings can be tiring as well as demoralising. But despite the trials, you must fight against what can at times seem like an onslaught of negativity. That is, if you want to get to the rewards. And the best way to do that is by cultivating and also nourishing a positive attitude.
However, the trick is not just being positive when everything is A-Okay, but rather staying positive even when things don’t go so well. Remember the time old philosophy – that you can’t always control the outcomes of things, but what you can control is how you respond to those outcomes. But is this the true secret to happiness? Well, read on.
While many of us can handle the pressure, some of us crumble under it. And if we don’t take care of our own happiness, our sales success can take a real blow. “How do you know if you have a piece of quartz or a diamond on your team, in your relationships, family, and even within yourself? The only way to really know – is to apply pressure”, reflects HBB Group CEO Garret Norris. So when it comes to handling pressure, do you have diamonds or quartzes on your team?
That’s why we want to show you that there is a real relationship between happiness and sales success. But it is up to you to decide, how does your personal happiness play a part in your sales process? And ultimately, what record long study has revealed the true secret to happiness?
What is the Secret to Happiness?
Robert Waldinger is a Harvard professor. He has been studying lifelong happiness for near on his entire life. It has been the longest study on happiness ever. And remarkably, it is still going on today.
The study started with boys from a variety of backgrounds. That is some poor, some rich, some in college and some on the streets. Researchers tried to predict the lives of the boys. All of them had different dreams of becoming rich and famous. However, a true prediction turned out to be impossible. As their health, personal relationships, jobs and social status did not match the researchers’ predictions.
Waldinger surprisingly could only come up with one major conclusion. Just one crucial result, from 75 years of studying happiness in 724 different men. The finding: good lives come from good relationships.
In other words, when these men didn’t have strong personal relationships and couldn’t count on others for support, their health declined. And consequently, they were less motivated to continue pursuing a successful career. And most importantly, good relationships were all based on effective communication!
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So, How Do We Cultivate and Nourish Happy Relationships?
Well, based on Waldinger’s research, below are 7 Tips on How to Be A Happy (Sales) Person. Or indeed a happy person in general. Fundamentally, these tips all have two key aspects in common. Effective Communication and Activity. Happiness is not a goal, it is a process. It is all about cultivating good relationships through communication. As for being active – activity drives results! Every time.
These tips are not just for Salespeople, everyone can benefit from these simple practices, so share them amongst your colleagues, peers and family. Isn’t the greatest gift of all is when we see someone happy? Well, why not give others the tools to make themselves happy, daily.
7 Tips on How to Be A Happy (Sales) Person
1. Talk to Another Adult Daily
Have an actual small conversation with them. Even if it is a neighbour or someone at the shops. It’s a break for your mind. And it gives you fuel for self-worth. By connecting with others, you become bigger than yourself. Conversations are the mixing bowls that great ideas emerge from. By discussing an idea with someone, even a stranger, they can help flesh it out.
Additionally, when someone takes the time to listen to you, they demonstrating appreciation for you. They may not agree with you in everything, but value your perspective. That in turn formulates self-worth and personal value. Our looks or digital image are no match for a conversation in showcasing our personality. Talking to someone is you in 3D, HD, and live all in one.
And best of all, conversations can make you laugh, can be fascinating, and can cheer you up.
2. Do Not Let Others Control Your Emotions
This one is easier said than done, but when done, it is highly successful emotionally. Added to that, it is also the absolute best feeling! Do not waste your personal social interactions on people who are emotionally draining. It was Eleanor Roosevelt who eloquently stated, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
As much as we hate to admit it, we are where we are in life because of the decisions we’ve made, either consciously or unconsciously. Most people don’t want to accept that they are the cause of their own outcomes. Especially when they’ve been so directly and closely exposed to vile human beings. They become programmed to a certain response, but the response is still nevertheless a choice. There’s always another response to choose.
When we take ownership of how we respond, we are taking full responsibility for ourselves. Look at the word responsibility: response + ability. That means our ability to respond to situations, events, or people in the way we choose. We can choose to respond in anger, or we can choose to respond with calm.
Here are some ways to better control your emotions and choose a better response:
- Start each day with a Positive Mindset. When you start with a positive outlook at the beginning of they day, it sets a calm tone for the day. It heightens your focus and self-awareness. It makes you better equipped to handle adversity.
- Accept Response-Ability. Accept that your feelings are entirely in your hands. When you do this, you take back control. You get to decide how you want to react.
- Reflection. Think back at a time when you got angry at someone. How did it go down? What did you say or do? How did you handle it? Now, think about the feeling when it first arrived. How could you have made a conscious decision to respond differently?
- Shut the Ego Up. Someone did something, and you suddenly became angry. Your ego said: “Go ahead. Get angry! Your feelings are totally justified. They *made* you feel this way. They totally deserve your wrath!” So, you ran with it. Sure, there’s always that sense of instant gratification that you get by letting loose on someone who’s done or said something that caused a negative feeling to stir in you. But that is only temporary. And sometimes, most of the time, you feel like a complete donkey’s rear afterwards because you didn’t have more self-control. Then the guilt and shame settles in. And so starts the viscous cycle.
What if you decided to ignore the ego when the feelings first started coming on and you said: “Nope. I am not going to feel this way. This feeling doesn’t serve me or my well-being. I am going to calmly let it go.” Try it next time you hear that wicked voice in your head pushing you to react in a fruitless attempt to punish the offending party.
By taking responsibility for your reactions, you eventually gain control over your emotions. You begin to develop new emotional habits and a better response system. Your perception of what once would have made you really angry will change, and you will see it in a different light. You are in control of how you feel and how you respond.
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3. Learn to Be Comfortable Alone But Also Try and Connect with New People
We often feel like we have to do things as a group in order for them to be fun. Not true. In reality, that’s not always the case. A lot of the time, many of us feel like we just need timeout with ourselves. And that is so important.
Alone time resets the brain and spirit. It dilutes the fog and clears the emotions from concern of what others are thinking. Having timeout with yourself allows you to crucially workout what you like and don’t like clearly. It gives you power to choose what you want in that moment, as well as in the future.
Try it out: it will do wonders for your confidence, and you will more than likely meet other people who have the same interests as you. And that there is equally important. Connecting with like-minded folk, adds to our self-worth and allows us to always be learning to better our emotional growth. And we know we only stop learning when we stop living!
4. Communicate Effectively with Your Partner, Family, Friends, and Colleagues
Open communication is the best way of maintaining strong relationships. Ask them quality questions about themselves using open questions. This will yield you answers which reflect their true feelings.
Additionally, listen to them. Actively. That is actually, listen! Very different to hearing them! Communication is not the same as broadcasting, or simply sending out of information. Effective Communication is a two-way process, in other words, it involves both the sending and receiving of information.
It therefore requires both speaking and listening. But most importantly, it requires developing a shared understanding of the information being transmitted and received.
- If you are the Information ‘Sender’ you need to communicate clearly to start with. Then ask quality questions to check your listeners’ understanding. You must also then in turn listen to their replies. And crucially, if necessary clarify further.
- If you are the Information ‘Recipient’ you need to listen carefully to the information. Then check you have understood by reflecting back, or asking questions. This is to ensure that both of you have the same understanding of the situation.
Effective Communication is therefore an active process, there is nothing passive about strong communication, in either direction.
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5. Volunteer, Give Back, Random Acts of Kindness
The action of a good deed is amazing for nourishing our well-being. Why? Because it’s a win-win situation. You are giving back AND you feel good about yourself. Additionally, you are also opening the door to opportunities to forge relationships with people who think like you!
Doing a good deed helps you focus your thoughts outward toward others. It helps you take a step outside your own world for a little while. Performing good deeds can have positive effects on your health, like reducing stress.
Two large studies found that older adults who volunteered reaped benefits in their health and well-being. Those who volunteered were living longer than non-volunteers. Another large study found a 44% reduction in early death among those who volunteered a lot (webmd.com).
WHY DO WE FEEL GOOD WHEN WE DO A GOOD DEED?
When we engage in good deeds, we reduce our own stress. This includes the physiological changes that occur when we’re stressed. During this stress response, hormones like cortisol are released, and our heart and breathing rates increase. That is, the “fight or flight” response.
WHY IS STRESS BAD FOR OUR HEALTH?
If a stress response remains “turned on” for an extended period, the immune and cardiovascular systems are adversely affected. That means the body’s defences are weakened, making it more susceptible to abnormal cellular changes. Studies of telomeres, that is the “end-caps of our genes”, have revealed long-term stress shortens those end-caps. And shortened end-caps is linked with early death.
In a nutshell, the process of cultivating a positive emotional state through pro-social behaviours, that is by being generous, may lengthen our life.
6. Always be Active but One Step at a Time
We know that activity drives results. And what’s more, it is awesome for our health. That is, activity promotes increased muscular endurance. That means, your muscles will be able to work longer and harder before they lose strength or feel exhausted (‘fatigued’). This effect can also see you feeling more able to cope with everyday physical tasks. Lowering blood pressure. Increasing good cholesterol levels. All round great benefits.
But remember, you don’t need to tackle every task. Rather tackle things one step at a time. This allows us to keep making progress even if we aren’t making as much progress as we had planned for before we started. Consequently, we can work through challenges instead of quitting every time we hit a tough spot.
HOW DO YOU EAT AN ELEPHANT?
If you are setting goals and finding that you can’t seem to stick with it, then shift your mindset to start to focus on each step. This allows you to concentrate on the current step and getting past it. There you go, an accomplishment already!
You will be amazed at how much this can help. It can allow you to continue just long enough for the work to become a routine and then habit. It can become an automatic act without much thought. When it does, you will start to be able to build on it. Today, just focus on working through today’s challenges. Remember the old adage – how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
7. Acknowledge Difficulties and Be Happy in the Present
This point in particular is what is known as giving your brain a “happiness advantage”. We must not bottle-up our feelings or brush sadness and conflict under the carpet. Rather, we must learn to always acknowledge our situation. Work on it. And continue to move forward. By learning how to be happy in the present you automatically cleanse your mind.
Try your best to be accepting of the moment and practice gratitude as much as you can. And for those of us that find the art of gratitude difficult to navigate on a continual basis, try these helpers:
- Write down 3 new things per day that made you feel happy or grateful
- Keep a list of positive experiences and add to it when you can
- Exercise!! Even if it is a 40-minute walk. Every day!
- Spend a minimum of two minutes a day slow breathing (or even better, meditating). In your own way.
- Spread the Happiness. That means, bring positivity into the world around you! Compliment a colleague. Reach out to a person feeling blue. Spend some time volunteering. Surprise someone with a gift or kind message for no reason, or to simply say thinking of you or thank you.
If you follow these tips, you will notice that you are happier, healthier, and more successful.
Keep in mind that happiness is not a goal, it is a way of life!
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HOW TO MAINTAIN A HAPPY SALES TEAM
Great, now that you understand the core happiness process, you can apply these techniques to your sales process. Firstly, it is important to strengthen your relationships. Sales is a people-oriented job, so maintaining good customer relationships increases your personal happiness.
Are you in a love-hate relationship with your job?
That is, do you hate it when you are at work and love it when you’re not?
Happy salespeople convert more leads and are generally more successful because their customers actually want to talk to them. They are more engaging and talk about the value of a product more than an unhappy salesperson does. If you’re unhappy in your sales job, try the tips above and apply the learnings below. Together this formula will see you your sales performance skyrocket as well as your KPIs and ROI.
Learn how to apply the two key happiness factors – effective communication and activity – in your Sales Process, by studying these Two Focus Learning Areas.
1. EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION FOR SALES SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS
- Understand Why You Are Here, What is Your Value Proposition?
- Learn How to Communicate with Customers in Unsettling Times
- Ask Quality Questions and Actively Listen to Strengthen Customer Relationships
- Change Your Sales Mindset
- Grasp the Power of Words
- Get Jabbed with Infectious Positivity
- Learn How to Reframe Speech for Positive Communication
- Understand Human Behaviour to form Positive Relationships
- Strengthen your Emotional Intelligence
2. SALES ACTIVITY FOR HAPPINESS AND RESULTS
- 5 Steps of a Sales Conversation
- Front of Mind Awareness
- Follow Up and the Sales Process
- Maximising Prospecting
- POWER HOUR
- Prospector’s Dozen
- Cost = Time + Money
- Customer DNA
- Upsell and Cross Sell Strategies
- Missed Opportunities
- Objection Handling
- Closing the Sales Process
- Client Meeting Map
Call us to organise your team of professionals to be part of your bespoke training and build a Positive Sales Process in your business. Each focus learning area will be tailored to your team’s needs and challenges.
4 x 90 minutes Effective Communication and Positive Sales Process Virtual Workshops. Cherry pick one or all of the topics mentioned above. Customise your Team’s Learning.
To Book Your Team on their tailored ↑ Effective Communication and Positive Sales Process Virtual Workshops Contact KONA on 1300 611 288 for a confidential conversation, or email info@kona.com.au anytime.
