Why Your Paycheck Sucks: The Brutal Truth About Commission-Based Sales
Prefer To Watch: Here’s The Video
Accept the Reality: It's Not Personal, But It Is Your Responsibility
If your paycheck sucks it means you suck. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, and it doesn't mean you're a bad father or bad mother it's not personal. It’s just means you are suck at selling. It's brutal to your ego and your pride but until you accept that you won't get all the rewards that are due do you. What I am telling you is something a real friend would do. It may seem nicer to just tell you not to worry that you don’t have to do anything and everything going to work out fine but that’s not the reality. That’s not going to help you.
Your Sales Results Reflect Your Skills, Not External Factors
For your life to change you have to change. It's the hardest thing for people to accept that the reason they're not making it is because of them it's not that your prices are too high, the people don't want to buy and they always want to get 3 estimates or shop around before they buy anything; it's that you aren't good enough yet to sell them. Understand that the same things that happen to you happen to everyone so if other people are doing it and you’re not the reason is you. All the leads suck equally. The key is not what happens to you since what happens to you happens to everyone but what you do about it that counts.
The reason most people don’t make more money is two reasons. One they keep doing the same things over and over and expect to get different results. The 2nd reason is they don’t have a backup plan to replace the one that isn’t working. Success is a trial and error-process. You try things and when they don’t work you try something else until you find what works. You keep making adjustments based on the results. It sounds brutal but that’s what life is about. Everything that is easy now was hard at one point and everyone who is first started out last.
The way you look at things or your mindset will help you with this. There are four traits or mindsets all successful people have. Please listen to the end to hear all four.
Mindset Is Everything: Four Traits of Successful People
1. Responsibility: Take Ownership of Your Results
The first mindset is that you have to take responsibility. If you want to get better and make more money accept responsibility that it is your fault you are making what you make and decide you are going to change it. Or in a nutshell, stop blaming anything but yourself for why your life is the way it is. The good part is by taking responsibility that it’s your fault your paycheck is low it will give you more of a feeling of control than a victim that something happens to and you can’t control or change it. That feeling of control is a big part of having a positive attitude.
When you feel your life is in your control your attitude will be a lot better. To me, your attitude is your vision of the future. Feel like a victim with no control and your vision of the future will probably be poor. Translation bad attitude. Feel like you can control your results because it’s your fault and that you are moving in the right direction by learning from your mistakes and getting better because of that your vision of the future will be good and so will your attitude. This has a big impact on your attitude which in turn will affect the 2nd mindset you have to have which is persistence.
2. Persistence: Never Quit Until You Succeed
You have to have a persistent mindset to continue while you are failing and learning. Something that will help you with persistence is that you have to make up your mind that you will never quit until you succeed. Whatever happens as you learn you have to become an unstoppable force until you win. You can’t do this with the mindset that “Well let me do this for another month or so and if it doesn’t work out then I’ll find something new.”
If you have that mindset you might as well quit right now because you’ll never be successful at anything with that. You have to decide and commit that you are going to be successful no matter what and that they will have to drag you out in a box before you stop. Get a mindset like that and nothing can stop you. I always like to say “It’s not over until I win.”
3. Perspective on Failure: View It as Feedback
The third mindset is how you look at failure. It’s not personal and only reflects your actions not who you are. It is also temporary not permanent. It’s a situation, not a condition. The best way to look at failure is that it is just feedback telling you you are doing it the wrong way. The key is that you figure out specifically what you are doing wrong and make the necessary adjustments. It is not enough to know that you are not selling but the specific reason why.
Is it your sit rate, your gross closing rate, or your average contract price and net closing rate? You do this by breaking down and tracking your numbers so you know what you have to adjust. Then work on those specific skill sets to get better. In a nutshell, you have to figure out a plan to get better and be very specific about where and how you are going to do that. The essence of all of this is by doing this you are practicing self-improvement and when you get better the job will get easier.
4. Handling Adversity: Be Strong, Not a Victim
The fourth mindset is how you handle adversity. There’s no magic bullet for this. You have to be strong and stop whining at everything that happens to you. Nobody wants to help you if you are being a baby. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. As a manager who would I want to help and put more effort into?
The person who says “It’s not my fault nobody is buying it’s because I am getting the bad leads and I need to go home and try to relax. This is too hard. ” Or the person who says “look I know I’m not getting it yet but I know I can do this and will work hard until I do. Just show me how and I will follow your lead. I will be your top salesperson.” One key trait I see in people who are successful is they have the ability to handle adversity. There is no crying in direct sales.
