By Carole Hawkins, [email protected]
Optimists succeed.
It sounds simple, but being optimistic often is not.
Motivational speaker Snowden McFall talked about tools and techniques that boost success at NEFBA’s November Sales and Marketing Council breakfast. If ideas like optimism seem a bit squishy, the numbers backing those ideas spoke directly to the bottom line.
“Optimists sell 56 percent more than pessimists do,” McFall said. “That’s a lot of money in your pocket.”
MetLife in the 1980s was losing $75 million a year because of turnover in its sales department, McFall said. The company brought in a sociologist who interviewed the top salespeople. He discovered the one trait they had in common was optimism.
The human resources department started profiling applicants for optimism. Within a year, turnover dropped to virtually zero and market share increased 50 percent.
So, how do people become more optimistic?
The good news is optimism is a 75 percent learned skill, McFall said.
One technique is to focus on good news when things aren’t going well. This also works when responding to a co-worker who is caught in a negative spiral.
“As soon as they start talking about how bad things are, say, ‘What good things happened today?’” McFall said.
Another technique is to remember past achievements and refer to them in times of distress.
“List the top 10 successes you’ve had in your career or life,” McFall said. “Nothing goes perfectly, but what we want to establish here is a pattern of success.”
McFall shared several other success tips:
• To become more productive, minimize interruptions. That means putting off checking email and posting tweets. “It takes 27 minutes to return to concentration once you’ve been interrupted. The average person loses two hours a day to interruptions,” she said.
• Listening is one of your most important business skills. Research says 60 percent of business mistakes are the result of faulty listening. “If you want your buyers to do more business with you, you’ve really got to hear them,” McFall said.
• The key to retaining good employees is to appreciate them. Forty-six percent of people quit their jobs because they don’t feel appreciated. “Showing up with beer and pizza at the end of a big shift goes a long way,” McFall said.