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1. Stop needing the business.

I had an amazing mentor early on in my selling career who used to tell me that Marc, I don't care if you need to close the sale to pay for gas to get home. Never need the business in your head. Any time you're in front of a prospect, you do not need the business. I don't care if you do need money. You do not need the business, and that is such an important mindset shift because what that's saying to the prospect and yourself mentally is because I don't need this business I can do anything that I want.

2. It's a game.

Selling is not real life. They can't hurt us. They can't do anything to break us or to kill us or anything like that. All they can do is tell us to take a hike, and you know what? It's not that bad. It's happened to me many times. I've been kicked out of offices, and it's not a big deal. Selling is much more like a video game or a sport where you have two different sides playing different roles.

3. Take risks.

Now, this builds off of what I just said. They can never hurt us and what I find is that salespeople always ask me, they say oh, what if they kicked me out of their office or what if they yelled at me on that phone call? You know what? If they did which is pretty unlikely but if they did, so what, what's the worst thing that can happen? They hang up the phone, or they ask you to leave. It's not a big deal, and I find that so often salespeople aren't taking enough risks. The more risks we take, the better off we're going to be.

4. Stop trying to fix situations gone wrong.

This is probably the most common question that I get. I have a forum of people that are constantly asking me questions, and I'd say about 50% of the questions I get are trying to deal with a situation that has gone wrong. Instead, diagnose what maybe happened in that situation. Find out any feedback that you can get, and that's going to make you much stronger for the next time that you're in a selling situation, and that is what's going to build your confidence in sales ultimately.

5. Learn every single time.

My father used to always tell me that people who stop learning start dying and it's always stuck with me, and it's so true, and it is so true in sales. Salespeople who stop learning start dying. They do, right? I mean, the second we say to ourselves, oh, you know what, I know everything that I ever need to know from selling is the moment that we start to become worse at sales.

6. SW cubed N.

Yep, you heard me right. SW cubed N. You may have heard this put differently, but SW cubed N stands for some will, some won't, so what, next. Now, it sounds trite and ridiculous but it's something that I learned many, many years ago and it will always be true in selling that some will, some won't, so what, next. We need to stop taking ourselves so seriously in sales.

7. Quit making friends.

This is I think a really old school mentality to selling, this idea that we should be making friends with our prospects, and you see it particularly in certain industries that are pretty insular, that are smaller industries, and you've got these really schmoozy sales guys or sales gals that are just chumming up to every prospect.