When You Grow Your Heart You Will Grow Your Sales.

If you haven't read Eckhart Tolle's, The Power Of Now, I encourage you to do so, as he goes on to say,

“Get the inside right. The outside will fall into place.”

Here at Selling from the Heart, we believe the inner work one is willing to do will fuel the outer success one will have.

Simply stated, heart in sales, it's not a dirty word nor is it something you run from.

My challenge to the sales community... If you can bring your heart to your personal relationships, then what prevents you from bringing heart to your professional relationships?

Within a sales context, the image of a heart often gets associated with softness or being too mushy gushy. The heart is strong and powerful. It is the driving force of our life, one heartbeat at a time.

Your success becomes crippled when there is an unbalanced connection with your heart.

Embracing a heart-centered approach rests with your ability to stop, look inward, and reflect upon the course of action you know is the right, rather than succumbing to external pressures and misaligned sales crapola that quite frankly doesn't work any longer.

"Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success."

Swami Sivananda

Let's take the foundation of this quote, as I ask you to reflect upon the following questions...

• What's one thing I will do right now to work on my heart health?
• What's one thing I will do right now to work on my mindset?

Our heart is the driving force to your survival. Plain and simple, if your heart stops beating, we know what happens. Therefore, we take good care of it. We exercise, we eat healthy, and we try to avoid stress; all in the name of heart-health.

Question becomes... How well are you taken care of your sales heart?

I encourage all of you to think about the following...

How can you sell from the heart if your heart is broken?

SUCCESS WILL COME FROM THE INSIDE OUT

We tend to place great value on the outer work. The number of weekly meetings, the output of sales calls, sales KPIs, and the progress toward one's quota.

The outer work is measurable, it's tangible and it looks like work.

However, continually focusing on all the outer work does not make you more successful or even more valuable as a salesperson.

When there's an imbalance with the inside work, meaning the acts and practices focused on clarity, purpose and vision, all the outer work we do starts to become draining which soon starts to deplete our sales production.

The work one doesn't see may be the work that matters most. 

To quote, Dr. Christine Carter, Ph.D., VP, Content Development, BetterUp,

"If we are to be our most productive, successful, and joyful selves, we must learn to value Inner Work® in the same way that we value Outer Work."   

Here’s the uncomfortable truth... We all have many limiting beliefs or thoughts.

Dr. Joe Dispenza so eloquently says,

“Our personality creates our personal reality.”

If you don’t do the inner work, you will keep reliving the same life, the same problems and challenges… because your personality, beliefs and thoughts are still the same. You behave in alignment with the beliefs and thoughts you have and think.

The stories in our mind become the stories of our lives.

Doing the inner work means having the courage to look at yourself, taking responsibility for your actions and doing whatever it takes to find alignment.

Doing the inner work means looking yourself in the mirror as you acknowledge to some degree that you're responsible for whatever you're experiencing.

To reinforce the importance of the inward journey, ponder this quote from Osho, in  Everyday Osho 

“Sooner or later the outer poverty is going to disappear—we now have enough technology to make it disappear—and the real problem is going to arise. The real problem will be inner poverty. No technology can help.”

WILL YOU LOOK INSIDE?

The journey to growing your sales at exponential rates starts with understanding who you are at your core. It is becoming more in tune with your deeper self. It is the ability to recognize what lights your fire, what makes you happy or sad.

To sell from the heart, you must be willing to take responsibility for your results.

You can't blame others or point fingers when things go wrong. You must be willing to look inward to determine what you could have done differently to make the outcome better.

It's not about playing the blame game but self-examination. Taking a true look at yourself and congratulating yourself on what you did right and planning to become stronger in the areas that you're weak.

"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls."

Carl Jung

Are you avoiding facing your own sales soul?

• How do you deal with your emotions?
• How do you react when your sales life goes astray?
• What areas do you need to work on in your personal growth and development?

When you truly understand who you are, you will start to make a conscious effort to improve yourself, how you communicate with others and how this all has an impact on your sales growth.

Here lies the question...

Do you have the courage to bring your heart to your sales life?

WILL YOU EMBRACE YOUR HEART

“Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness,” Brené Brown writes in Daring Greatly. “It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.”

What are you willing to do to develop the courage and compassion to better connect with your clients?

Brené Brown reinforces this at so many levels, and why I believe the key to sales success starts at the heart level.

She discusses wholehearted people as having:

• A sense of worthiness
• Courage
• Compassion
• The ability to connect with others
• Gratitude
• Leaning into joy
• Vulnerability

Here's the mirror moment for many of you... How many of you are bringing the words above to your client relationships?

Why have many in sales become results driven and commission breathing, as opposed to outcome driven and difference makers.

All too many in sales are looking outward as they're being led by their brain. Their inner core values have been thrown to the waste side as money and profit become the driving force.

“If your goals aren’t synced with the substance of your heart, then achieving them won’t matter much.”

Danielle LaPorte

We all know, for the brain to work well we need a strong heart. However, when I look inside many sales organizations, I often find unhealthy hearts where values and beliefs are misaligned. Layer on top of this misaligned values in management and let me tell you... this becomes a recipe for sales disaster.

WILL YOU GROW YOUR HEART?

If you want to grow your sales, if you desire to reach greater sales heights, then you must be willing to grow your heart.

This all starts with some self-awareness.

"I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion."

Billie Jean King

What are you willing to do to become a sales champion?

SELF-AWARE

Self-awareness involves recognizing and understanding your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, strengths, weaknesses, and motivations.

This understanding can help you make better decisions and navigate life's challenges more effectively. This becomes even more critical as we know how challenging the sales world is.

Self-awareness means you know yourself so well that you become amazingly happy, fulfilled and content.

• Are you living as the real you and not some sales facade?
• Do your thoughts match your actions?
• Does your walk match your talk?

I believe living a lie comes out sooner or later. Living a sales lie is even worse. This will ultimately mess with your career.

Are you aware of what makes you come alive?

Are you aware of what makes your clients come alive?

Becoming self-aware is a valuable trait which contributes to happiness, fulfillment, and contentment. We know this is just one piece of the puzzle.

Achieving new levels of sales success requires a combination of self-awareness, meaningful relationships, personal growth, and pursuing goals that align to your values and passions.

SELF HONESTY

Becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable is what ferocious self-honesty is built upon.

Being self-honest means to acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your successes and failures, without deception or self-delusion.

I encourage you to think about this one...

"Do one thing every day that scares you. Those small things that make us uncomfortable help us build courage to do the work we do."

Eleanor Roosevelt

How can you become ferociously self-honest if you struggle to deal with any discomfort in your sales life? You can’t and you're only fooling yourself.

In the hyper competitive world of sales, those who are willing to take risks, step out of their comfort zone and create some discomfort for themselves will be those who will reap the biggest rewards.

Self-honesty is one huge aspect of personal growth, self-improvement, and building authentic and meaningful relationships.

ARE YOU READY TO GROW YOUR SALES?

Unfortunately, the sales world is riddled with braggadocious, bravado filled behaviors. Name brand suits, Rolex watches and fancy cars mask the insecurity.

You see we all have imperfections. We all have baggage. We all have something hiding inside the sales closet of the past.

Selling From the Heart is the new sales economy.

• It's about knowing your values and living by them.
• It's about getting radically honest with yourself.
• It's about doing the hard work to make sure you add meaningful value to your clients.

What's powering your heart engine right now?

There is an old proverb:

“Above all things guard your heart…”

Originally published on Larry Levine's LinkedIn.