Controlling the Idiot Inside You.

There seems to be an idiot inside of us that is always about two drinks away from strangling our common sense and rolling back the progress of a thousand amazing achievements we have accomplished.

No matter how sophisticated or degreed we think we are, it only takes a  minute or two for a decade of passion and focus to fly straight out the window in a moment if ill-fated idiocy.

It’s high impact, self-destruction.

And it’s most likely the reason you aren’t closing as many deals as you think you should be.

It’s called your “idiot factor”.

And it creeps into small parts of every interaction in your sales day.

• It’s your annoyance from a meeting running late that makes you lash out at a customer pushing back at your price proposal.
• It’s your flirting with an attractive client that gets you distracted and more focused on fantasy then the reality of your business deal.
• It’s your anger from personal setback that makes you irrational, overly sensitive, and emotionally unintelligent with your prospect.
• It’s your fatigue from too little sleep and too much stress that leaves you forgetful and failing to execute on the details.

It’s not logical at all.  It’s pure emotion.  It’s your feelings.

And that’s why it’s so deadly

See, left to your own reason, you would never be an idiot at all.  Right?

Idiot moments trump sales intelligence.

No amount of sales training, experience, and niche sales talent can match the damage from an “idiot moment”.

You might be the best “closer” in the world; but if you can’t moderate your urges and temper your anger,  nothing else matters.

In fact, you probably need to get out of the business of selling in the first place.

All you’re doing is investing in relationships you plan on blowing up at some random time down the road.

(Why not burn your checkbook or drive your car into the lake while you are at it?)

Beating the idiot inside you.

You can’t stop being an idiot by just pretending that this doesn’t apply to you.  That’s the attitude that makes you an attitude in the first place.

And stop running to read three more sales books hoping that you can pick up another skill to counterbalance your “idiot factor”.

Isn’t it clear by now that that hasn’t worked?  Stop already.

Here are a few things that do work:

1. Purposefully take longer to make decisions when you feel yourself annoyed.  – Wait 24 hours before “throwing in the towel”  or creating situations that you can’t back out of later.
2. Burn off some steam ahead of time. – Get some exercise.  Go running.  Grab some pilates.  Hit something.  Essentially — channel your energy in a way that allows you to feel like you are in control.
3. Breathe your way through a stressful situation – When you feel yourself ready to explode, take long slow breathes where you count to “five”.  Right as things are crashing down around you, pause to breathe.
4. Apologize as quickly and as passionately as you lose your cool. — You have one (rare…) chance to recover from an idiot moment and and it happens when you immediately seize the moments to apologize for your insanity.

Life is easier when you aren’t stupid.

It’s about you giving yourself a fair chance to be the amazing person you know you can be.

Sometimes the next best thing to doing something incredibly brilliant is just not doing something stupid.

And being an idiot probably qualifies as a stupid moment.

Ask yourself.

How much more awesome would you be if you could control the idiot inside you?