How To Improve Self-Esteem

Written by on October 31, 2016 / Archived Podcasts / Personal Development

Self-esteem is the most important aspect of sales. You are who you think you are!

If you want to grow your book of business you must think of yourself as the person you want to be.

For example:

You have two widely different sales years. In year one you close $1 million in new business and take home $200,000 in compensation.  In year 2 you close $2 million in new business and take home $400,000.

Are you the $1 million producer or the $2 million producer?

Or are you a $10 million producer who is just getting warmed up?

You perception of yourself will determine how much you produce next year.

In this episode of the 60 Second Sales Show we focus on how you can improve your self-esteem and use it to grow your business.

Here is the transcript of this episode:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of The 60 Second Sales Show. I’m your host, Dave Lorenzo and with me I have my partner in distributing fantastic information. I know you think I was going to say my partner in crime, but no crime will be committed here today. My partner in distributing fantastic information, Nancy Pop. Hi, Nancy. How are you?

Hi, Dave. I’m doing good. How about you?

I’m doing great, thanks. Today we’re going to kick off with a great question and it’s something that is so important. I can’t even begin to tell you how important this is. Nancy, read the question we got from my friend, Edwin, in Titusville and then we’ll talk a little bit about the concept that Edwin raises today.

Today’s question is from Edwin Allen from Titusville, Florida. He says, “Dave, I lost my best client a couple of weeks ago and I’m really down. How do I get my confidence back?”

This is probably the most important thing … The most important factor in business is your self-esteem. Think about that for a minute. When we think about business, we think about funding. We think about finances and how to have the money we need to get things done, but really that’s not the most important factor in business. The most important factor in business is the self-esteem of the leader. It’s the self-esteem of the sales pro who’s going out on the front lines everyday looking to make contact with people and introduce the value you provide to new people.

In life in general regardless of what you do, you can be a performer, you can be a professional athlete, you can be a performer on stage, you can be someone working in a factory on the assembly line, if you think you are the best person in your role, you will behave consistently with your thoughts. Nancy, has there ever been a time when you wound up having a serious setback and the next thing you knew, you were on top of the world. You went from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs. Has that ever happen to you?

Oh, sure. It happens every week.If you don’t mind sharing with our audience, tell us a story about when that’s happened to you. Tell us first about one of the lows and then tell us about how you came back and one of the highs. Give us the story.

Sure. I have many stories of those instances, but I guess one that happened quite often was last year I was a full-time student and I had a full-time job and an internship. For me it was just the struggle of balancing everything. Anytime something bad happened even if it was the smallest thing, my confidence would completely plummet because I would just think to myself, “Why am I not Superwoman? Why can’t I do everything and do it perfectly?” I think it’s sometimes you expect so much from yourself that the smallest thing that lets you down, you’re just going to feel like total crap about yourself.

The point that you raised is a good one. When we talk about how to overcome setbacks or how to boost your self-esteem, we choose the view we have of ourselves. You choose to view yourself in any given moment as the person who achieved the highlight of your career or you can choose to view yourself as the person who just got absolutely crushed. I feel that it’s so valuable to share stories of setbacks and how you overcome them that … The reason that it’s valuable to share that is because for 2 reasons. Number 1, it’s just like why we go to the movies. People think we go to the movies to laugh and be entertained or to be thrilled or to engage in a story that keeps us riveted.

The real reason we go to the movies is to experience through the portrayal of other’s lives, to experience the emotions that other people experience and we want to see that other people have setbacks that are worst than ours. We want to see that other people have it worst than ours so we can feel better about ourselves. Now you may say to yourself, “Look, that’s a very cynical negative view of the world,” and that maybe true, but subconsciously we look at people who have setbacks and who overcome them and we say to ourselves, Number 1, “Wow, that was so much worst than what’s going on with me. I’m so glad I’m not there.” We also say, “Jeez, if that guy can overcome what just happened to him, I certainly can overcome this.”

Edwin, when you asked me this question, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you the gift of sharing with you some … Just some crappy experiences that happened to me this past week so that you can understand that no matter what happens, people overcome much worst. Then I’m going to show you how you can overcome whatever situation you’re going through right now. Look, the bottom line is if you have a problem that writing a check can fix, you don’t really have a problem. I’m going to say it again. If you have a problem that writing a check can fix, you don’t really have a problem. Losing a client is not only not the end of the world, but it can encourage you to take massive action and get going to achieve success.

Real problems, real setbacks are things that require massive intervention beyond the scale of human capabilities. I don’t want to bring everybody down, but health issues for example. That’s a real problem. Losing a problem, that’s not a problem. Let me tell you a little bit about what my week was like and you’ll see I think how … I’ll highlight for you how you can use the positive self-esteem that you have to overcome just about anything. My week started off on Monday. There was a thing that’s been on my calendar forever. This Monday one of my clients, somebody who’s been a client of mine for probably … I guess if I had to look, it was 8 or 9 months. Someone who’s been a client for 8 or 9 months had asked me to circle Monday, this past Monday.

He was going to be in Florida. He wanted me to meet him for breakfast. He’s from the West Coast and we speak every week. He’s a weekly consulting client. I work with him on different aspects of his business. He’s an entrepreneur. I work with him on different aspects of his business focusing on growing and improving his business. The work we’ve done together has produced significant results for him. I won’t characterize them as great. If it were my business, I would say the results are great. I would say they were fantastic, but people look at things differently. The results, the value that I’ve provided to him was significant and he’d be the first person to admit this. Sunday night comes, he texts me, sends me the address of where I’m to meet him.

I was led to believe the address was right around the corner from me. It turns out it was about an hour away. He was at a Buddhist Retreat Center which is in the middle of the Florida Everglades. Now this studio where I’m recording this, my home and my studio is right off the back of my home. My home and my studio is on the border of the Everglades. It was natural for me to think this would be close by. Nevertheless, I committed to going, so I decided to go. I drive an hour into the middle of the Everglades to meet this gentlemen. I come to the Buddhist Retreat Center. I park. We meet. We’re sitting having breakfast and talking. He’s talking about all the good things that are going on in his life and in his business.

He thanks me profusely and then he drops the hammer on me. He says to me that he’s got some things in his business that he needs to address and he’s bringing in a consultant, a different consultant, to address them. He gives me these list of things that he and I have never discussed and we speak once a week by the way. He and I have never discussed. He’s never raised them. I would have never thought to ask about them because I didn’t know that these things we’re going on. He says to me, “I’m using your idea,” the idea that I gave him, “to kick this whole thing off.” I look at him and I’m astonished. He says, “We’re going to have to discontinue our work so I can pay for this other consultant.” I said to him, “Why would you think to bring in another consultant to address the issues that you know I can handle?

I gave you the idea that kicked this off. Why would think to bring in another consultant?” He said to me, “I was reading this book and the author of this book … What she said really resonated with me. Her fees are much more than yours,” which also made me feel great. He’s bringing in somebody who cost a lot more than me. “I feel like she’s going to be able to fix what’s wrong with me.” Set aside how I responded to this gentlemen in this instance, bottom line is I drove the hour back from the Buddhist Retreat Center to my office knowing that this client, after our termination period, that this client was going to go away, that I’m not going to have this client anymore. That was on Monday. Yesterday which was Tuesday … We’re recording this on a Wednesday.

Yesterday which is Tuesday, I’m conducting a meeting that I do that I hold for lawyers once a month. It’s a group I run for lawyers in South Florida once a month. It’s one of the only ways I work with lawyers anymore, but it’s a powerful group of successful attorneys. We’re going around the room talking about things that are working. One of my clients makes a presentation in the meeting talking about how she’s raised her fees as a result of some of the things that I’ve taught her and her business has improved immeasurably. Then she goes on to say that she’s working with another consultant on a specific issue and that other consultant has produced fantastic results for her and she tells people what she’s paying the other consultant.

She’s paying the other consultant … You guessed it. More than she’s paying me. That’s Tuesday. Okay? Monday. Tuesday. Two hits which would have thrust most people into the valley of depression. They would have said to themselves, “What the hell am I doing wrong? I cannot believe my clients are paying other people more than they’re paying me. I am obviously not demonstrating my value. This is ridiculous.” All right. Last night, Tuesday night, those of you who listen regularly know that my family, we are baseball fanatics. My soon to be 8 year old son plays on 2 baseball teams. He’s playing on 2 baseball teams this fall. Year round he plays baseball. He plays baseball 6 days a week. He’s a baseball nut.

We watch baseball all the time. Even on winter we watch games that were played last year. We’re fanatics for baseball. Last night my son’s baseball team plays. They’re undefeated this season. They only lost 1 game in the summer season. It’s the fall season. They’re undefeated so far. They are 7-0 and 1. They actually have a tie. They ran out of time in 1 game and they ended up tying the other team. They’re playing a team that’s 5 and 1. The teams meet and they’re down going into the last inning. They’re the visiting team. Top of the sixth inning they’re down by 5 runs. They played probably one of their worst games of the year. Defensive they’re all over the place. They’re down by 5 runs.

This team hits like crazy and they’re just not hitting really well in this game. At the 8 and under level in the league that they play in, the sixth inning is what they call an open inning. There’s usually a runs limit per inning, but in the sixth inning you can score as many runs as possible. In the sixth inning, my son’s team gets up and something unbelievable happens. Their bats woke up and they scored 18 runs in the sixth inning. 18 runs in the sixth inning. They put the team away and they won the game. Their character was such they were able to come back in spite of being down the entire game. These 3 stories all strung together. We talk about things that could be setbacks. I came home from that game last night.

We’re all fired up. We’re excited. Everybody goes to bed. We’re all fired up. We’re excited. Everybody goes to bed. It’s 11:00. I put on the television in the background. I pour myself a glass of wine and I’m just reviewing what’s going on in my business to get ready for today and I noticed something unusual. I looked at the proposals that I’ve written actually just this week alone based on the activity that I’ve conducted over the last couple of months. You know what? I have more proposals outstanding. I’m due to get more answers on proposals by the end of this week than I’ve ever had in my history. We’re recording this show … Right now it is the end of October. It’s October 26, Wednesday, October 26 when we’re recording this. My proposals for 2017 …

If all of the proposals I have outstanding this week alone come through, my 2017 revenue will be close to double the revenue I did in 2016. Just the proposals that I’ve written and I have outstanding this week alone. I finished my glass of wine last night. I go up to get into bed and my wife is sitting there watching the news. I mute the TV for a second and I say, “You know what? You and I spent so much time in the last couple of days talking about ridiculously bad things that have happened. I just looked at what’s going on in the business,” in our business because it is our business and I showed her the numbers. She said, “Oh, my goodness.” She said, “This could be your best week ever.” I said, “You’re 100% right.”

Edwin and everybody else who’s listening, you’re perspective is so important. Human nature leads us to focus on the things that are happening in our lives that are negative. The reason we do that is simply because of how we’re wired. You need to rewire your brain and focus on the things that are going on that are positive. Focus on the things that are going well. You can choose who you want to be in your mind. The beauty of the human mind is it cannot tell the difference between reality and your perception. You can choose to believe that you are the person who has achieved the greatest result you’ve ever achieved in your business. When I was the managing shareholder of The Gallup Organization, I closed a deal which was the biggest deal in the history of the firm at the time.

It was a $20 million consulting deal. I choose to believe that I’m the guy that closed the $20 million deal. I’m not the guy that drove out into the middle of a swamp and got fired by a client at a Buddhist Monastery. That’s not me. That happened and it’s hysterical. It’s absolutely hysterical that it happened and I will use that story forever because I think it’s a terrific story. I’m not that guy. That’s one incident that happened to me. I’m the $20 million guy. That’s what I choose to believe. When I look back on Friday at this week, I’m going to look back and I’m going to look at the proposals that I have outstanding. Even if only 1 or 2 of them come through, it was a fantastic week. When Nick, my son, looks at the game he played last night, he doesn’t look at the 5 innings his team was getting crushed.

He looks at the one inning when they scored all those runs. That’s what he looks at. That’s who he chooses to believe he is. Here’s some things you can do. Here’s some things you can do to boost your self-esteem because what you put out to the universe and this is going to sound all foo foo, hokey, but it’s true. What you choose to put out to the universe comes back to you. People perceive you the way you present yourself to the world. This is not some mystical holistic hocus pocus. I’m not making fun of you holistic mystical people. Believe anything you want to believe. This is fact. If you approach people with confidence, if you approach people like you’re the $20 million person, they will believe you are the $20 million person.

If you approach people like you’re the sad sack loser who can’t get a deal done, who got fired in a Buddhist Monastery, who’s client stood up in front of everyone else and told everyone else that she was paying a consultant more than she’s paying you, if you choose to believe you’re that person, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will be that loser. Choose to believe the good things and you will put out to the world that you are that best person in your industry and people accept you at your own appraisal. Here’s what I want you to do to shift your mindset. I want you to do these 5 things. These 5 things. Number 1, list all the positives that have happened to you during the course of the day. List all the positives that have happened to you during the course of the day and review them at the end of the day before you go to sleep.

If you can’t think of all the positives, list 2 or 3 and focus on those positives. Let those be the last thing you think of before you put your head on the pillow at night because I want that to be the last memory you have before you go to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, take that same list which should be on our nightstand next to your bed and look at that list first thing in the morning. These are the great things that happened to me yesterday. Then when the negative comes in, just push it out. Say, “I don’t want to think about that. I want to think about these positive things.” Number 2, at dinnertime, eliminate all the negative talk. Only talk about good things that happened during the day at dinner. In our house we go around the table and we talk about the best thing that happened to you today.

We talk about the best thing that happened. We start off by talking about the funniest thing that happened. What’s the funniest thing that happened to you today? It could be something that happened to you personally. It could be something that you saw, something that you observed. Then we talk about the best thing that happened to you today. We do that because we want to focus on the positives. Then, because I have 2 little kids, my wife and I pick out a couple of goods things we caught the kids doing during the course of the day and we talk about a couple of the good things we caught the kids doing to reinforce the positive behavior. Dinnertime conversation is so important.

If you spend your dinnertime conversation talking about, “I can’t believe that my health care premiums are going to double. Can you believe what this woman said about me in this meeting? Oh, my God,” it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you focus on the negative, it’s going to drag you down. Don’t do that. Spend your dinnertime conversation focusing on the positive. If you eat dinner by yourself, you should be spending the time with your self-talk … Okay. This is so important. Your self-talk in your mind, your mental movie theater, should be playing the highlight reel of the day, not the lowlights. It shouldn’t be playing the reel of times when you tripped and you spilled coffee all over that brand new blouse you bought. That’s not going to be helpful.

You should be reviewing in your mind the mental highlight reel from the day. You’ll have a smile on your face at the end of dinner and when you walk around, people will see you smiling and people are attracted to people who are smiling. They’re attracted to happy people. The third thing I want you to do is I want you to make a conscious effort to get testimonials. Nancy and I in our episode last week talked about how to get testimonials. The episode last week is called The Ask. The Ask. You can look for it at DaveLorenzo.com under podcasts. You’ll find The Ask there or you can just go to DaveLorenzo.com and type in T-H-E-A-S-K and you’ll find that episode. It’s a great episode where we talked about how you get testimonials. Get positive testimonials. Get at least 1 or 2 a week.

Your testimonials are a huge part of your marketing, a huge part of your sales process, but more importantly, review those testimonials to boost your own self-esteem. Those testimonials show the value you provide. Read them. Believe them. People wouldn’t have written them, they wouldn’t have said those words if they didn’t think they were true. You are that person. You are the person who provided that value in order to earn that testimonial. When you’re down in the dumps, read your testimonials. Number 4, I want you to diagnose your best achievements. So often when we screw up, we spend every minute of every hour of the day after going through step-by-step what happened. Think about the last time you had a conflict or a fight with someone particularly in your personal life.

You go back and you think to yourself, “Man, I said this. I said this. I said this. He said this. He said this. He said this. Oh, my goodness. I wish I could go back and here’s what I would do differently.” I don’t want you to do that anymore. That’s gone. That’s over with. Forget about that. What I want you to do is I want you to take the best possible things that have happened to you and I want you to spend your time diagnosing that. That great deal that you signed, that great deal that you just closed, I want you to think about how that relationship got started. I want you to think about the hard work and persistence you put into to win those people over. I want you to think about that one point when everything could have gone the other way and you pulled it back from the brink.

You’re that person. I want you to diagnose your best deals. I want you to go through and obsess over step-by-step what you did and think about how you can do it again. You can do it on command. You can do it anytime you want to. You’re that person. That’s the guy, that’s the woman you are. I want you to diagnose those great deals and forget about the ones that fall by the wayside. Who cares about them? Over and done with. Finally, the fifth point is I want you to remember this specific phrase, “Today’s activity leads to tomorrow’s result. Today’s activity leads to tomorrow’s result.” If you want to influence tomorrow, get busy doing the right things today. After you’ve diagnosed those fantastic deals that you’ve closed, you’ve broken them down and you saw it step-by-step.

 

Go out and do those same things today, right now. Diagnose how you started the relationship that led to the million dollar deal you closed and then go out right now today and do that activity with 5 or 6 or a dozen different people who could become that next million dollar client. Focus on the steps you’re taking today to make tomorrow the day you close the biggest deal ever. You will relate the fact that you’re taking positive steps today to million dollar deals tomorrow and you will never ever get down in the dumps again. You will never feel bad about what happens to you because you know you’re doing the right things. Our self-esteem is one of the most critical aspects of our success. If you’re an entrepreneur, your self-esteem is more important than any financial investment.

Your self-esteem is more important than any skills or knowledge or talent. If you feel good about yourself, you’ll be able to take whatever action is necessary to achieve the results that you want. When things happen, you’ll be resilient. You’ll be able to bounce back from adversity and you’ll be able to come even stronger than you were before. This is probably the most important concept that you can master as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, as a sales professional. The sooner you understand and internalize this concept, the more you’ll feel like you’re of the world and the better you will perform in your business and in your life.

My friends, it is a pleasure to share this with you and I want your feedback on how you’ve been able to leverage these concepts to achieve success. The best way to reach out to me is to connect with me on social media. We’ve got so much stuff going on on social media. There are articles that are going up every day on my Facebook page and you can find that Facebook page @TheDaveLorenzo. I put up one minute videos all the time on concepts just like this on Instagram. Again that’s @TheDaveLorenzo on Instagram. I put up a whole bunch of stuff on Twitter which is related not only to business strategies, sales, marketing, productivity improvement, but also my thoughts on the election, politics, baseball, football, sports, ridiculous things that happen to me all the time.

I put that stuff on Twitter. You can find my Twitter handle. You can find me on Twitter @TheDaveLorenzo on Twitter. Of course, the fantastic center, the hub of information for sales and beyond is my website. That’s DaveLorenzo.com. It’s my name with dot com after it, DaveLorenzo.com. On there we’ve got dozens and dozens of videos, hundreds of articles, all of these podcasts. If you want to go back and listen, they’re all there for you. DaveLorenzo.com. As always I thank Nancy Pop, our fantastic producer for joining me on the show today. I thank you for listening. Until next time.