Thomas Edison said “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Perspiration is essential in equipment leasing sales. It’s hard work keeping applications flowing in the door and booked transactions flowing out. Every once in a while you’ll get a burst of inspiration and all your perspiration pays off. Unfortunately, many brokers are currently dogged by a sense of desperation. Desperation, like perspiration, has an odor.

In my opinion desperation has a foul odor and perspiration has the essence of determination. To become a sales genius (Edison was also a genius at selling his ideas) one should avoid the smell of desperation, exhibit hard work that generates perspiration, then evolve into attainment, the state of inspiration. Let’s take a look at these three phases.

Desperate Sales Reps
Have you ever dealt with a desperate salesperson? They are easy to sniff out. I know because I’ve been one. Early in my career, I sold photocopiers door to door and had dismal results. I avoided the cold calls that needed to be made and continually hoped that either my Dad’s accounting firm or my brother’s law firm would buy a copier from me. They refused. (When your family members won’t buy from you, you know you reek!) I felt like a victim. I asked myself questions like, “If you have a college degree, why are you walking uninvited into offices all day, only to experience continual rejection?”

When my sales manger would post the numbers at the end of the day mine were the lowest on the board. I blamed my territory, my lack of leads and the manufacturer of the copiers. After months of suffering a colleague gave me a cassette tape program called The Psychology of Winning by Dr. Denis Waitley. Listening to this helped me change my way of thinking and I started to experience good results.

Having been a desperate sales rep, I know the symptoms. They include: not listening to the prospect, finding ways to avoid the work that needs to be done and not taking a clear look at yourself. Desperate reps feel that their employer or their boss is doing something to them. They can be characterized as someone who does not take responsibility, someone who is constantly blaming. Ask them why they are not meeting their budget and they will immediately have a story of how someone else did this to them and it’s not their fault. They ask the question: “Why me?” They feel that sales is drudgery, just something to get through.

Prospects can smell it when you are desperate for business. Few people want to do business with someone who is desperate. This is not the way sales has to be. Just by becoming aware of this victim thought process can help a salesperson break out of the pattern. To move out of the desperation phase, reps need to release blame from their thoughts. The only thing there ever is to blame is ignorance.

Selling equipment leasing takes knowledge and skill. Becoming responsible for yourself takes practice. Thoughts like, “These leads are terrible, credit is too tight, our rates are too high” are thoughts of blame. Blame is a thought form that blocks creativity. Desperate reps don’t accept that cold calling is what they have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what my job requires me to do and I do it willingly.

For example, you may not be able to enjoy making 60 dials a day to vendors that reject you, let alone be enthusiastic about it, but you can bring acceptance to it. Prospecting in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. You can also bring fun into it. If you don’t like to prospect, turn it into a game where you track down the scent of a good customer.

Another approach to getting out of the blame game is to take five minutes before making prospect calls to recall pleasant memories of past sales experiences. It can be a memory of closing a big deal or remembering the excitement experienced when receiving a nice fat commission check, or reflecting on past praise received when exceeding sales goals. In the event that the salesperson has never experienced sales success, then use the sense of smell to bring back a pleasant memory, maybe from childhood, and then call on a lessee.

Keep an essential oil such as lavender or sandalwood in your desk and smell it before making a call. This will put you in a more relaxed state of mind. If a rep engaged in this simple intentional self-creation practice before making prospect calls, he’d not only change his bad odor, he’d change his dominant internal representation of himself, and that’s the secret for making real change.

Perspiration
The sales rep in the perspiration phase smells like a fusion of determination and grit. This rep is making things happen despite an exceptionally uncertain financial climate. He realizes that he doesn’t have to be a victim of circumstance, he can use courage and insight and humor to grow volume. He has a compelling vision of succeeding and rolls up his sleeves and goes to work, applying the persistence of a Pitt Bull.

In this stage, you sweat the negativity out of your system. You are aware that thoughts have a relationship with your experience. You make it happen. It’s like when you start going to the gym, at first it’s grueling but once you continually go and experience how good your body feels after exercise, then you look forward to going. This is a higher vibrational level, a higher order of being. Things aren’t just happening to you, you participate in what happens and begin to transform your sales efforts and results. You use your creative imagination to come up with new programs to talk about with vendors and lessees.

When I went from desperation to perspiration I began to enjoy prospecting. I focused on exactly what I was doing in the moment, and I lost myself in it. I made the present moment the focal point and stopped thinking about the past and the future. Joy then flowed into my sales efforts. I fell in love with leasing and transferred that love/enthusiasm to my prospects.

Inspiration
In this stage you are in the “zone,” and you emit the aroma of effortlessness. This can also be referred to as flow, the mental state of operation in which a person is fully immersed in what they are doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

Salespeople in this elevated state have a high energy level, self-confidence, clear intentions and the ability to see obstacles as challenges. They are enthusiastic and don’t take anything personally. They prepare, they plan, they visualize themselves helping vendors sell equipment and lessees obtain the equipment they need to grow their businesses. They experience sheer creativity beyond their planning, something seems to operate through them and sales become magnetized towards them.

When you are in the inspiration (inspiration actually comes from the Latin in-spirit) stage, there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward. You start to feel like a dart that is moving towards the bull’s-eye — and enjoying the journey.

After two years in the perspiration phase, I did delve into the inspirational state. Things just seemed to click. I had a network of vendors submitting applications on a daily basis. Lessees that I had been calling on for years all of a sudden were calling me. I easily made President’s Club and I truly enjoyed my job. Unfortunately, the “zone” is not a state that you continually stay in but one you come in and out of. You have to work to get roused back into the zone.

One could argue, if your not inspired first then you won’t want to perspire. That’s how most people think. They keep waiting for that one good idea to inspire them and then they’ll want to put in the work. That’s exactly the opposite of what Edison meant. Inspiration doesn’t just show up. You have to work at it. Creativity doesn’t just show up, you have to be determined and put in the work to make it happen.

Regardless of whether you’re in the desperation, perspiration or inspirational state, the interesting thing is that sales success comes down to how you think — how you think about business, customers, the economy and especially how you think about yourself. What goes on inside your head determines the degree of your success. Look at Edison; he said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” If we could all start to think like that, and put in the required perspiration, then we’ll obtain the sweet smell of success.

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Linda P. Kester is a bestselling author and professional speaker with 20 years of experience in leasing sales and marketing management. As founder of the Institute of Personal Development, Kester has helped hundreds of salespeople increase their volume. Her book, 366 Marketing Tips for Equipment Leasing, has produced results for leasing companies in the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia. For more information, visit www.lindakester.com.