How to Turn Your Sales Team's Victim Mentality into a Growth Mindset


Do you have a sales executive on your team that is always complaining about something? The sales quota is too high. The bonus is too low. The marketing strategy and positioning is not right. The economy is bad. The exchange rate is killing the margins. This list never ends.

Despite the fact that these challenges occur, sales leaders need to be mindful of whether their sales team is facing challenges and issues with a “victim mentality” or “growth mindset.” Let’s explore how to recognize both behaviors in your team.

Victim Mentality 
See no choices or power. Sales executive with victim mentality act as if they have no choices or power to change their poor sales outcome. They operate on external lock of control, in which they give up the pilot seat of their sales territory, clients, and results to occupy the spectators’ seat. By doing so, they avoid responsibility and accountability. Their behavior can be summed as follows: “If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it.”  If you can’t take responsibility for your responsibilities, and man-up as they say,  you will always be have a victim’s mindset.

Unable to deal with rejection. Sales reps with a victim mindset become very upset when clients say, "I don't see any need to change” or “I am very happy with your competitor’s products.” They take these interactions personally and can get emotional when things veer away from the direction they envisioned. Consequently, they avoid new challenges and become more likely to give up easily. In the world of sales, this attitude means the difference between failure and success. 

Indulge in self-pity and negativity. Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.  Sales people who think like victims can be very detrimental to team engagement and organizational performance. They create a negative environment—full of complaints and stress. They are known for their ability to persuade other team members to sympathize with their negativity and helpless approach. Soon, the entire team can have some degree of negativity and believe they are being mistreated.

Growth Mindset 
Focus on efforts. Sales executive with a growth mindset, look to challenges as an opportunity and focus on effort needed to win. Sure, sometimes external factors that are not within their control will determine whether they succeed or fail. But they know that they control their efforts put in executing and developing their overall performance. A growth mindset is a key ingredient to closing the achievement gap.

Encourage self-discipline. The sales executive with a growth mindset choses to be disciplined, look at the data as a tool for taking fast actions, and break down their challenges to make them more manageable. As a result, they learn from difficulties and find creative ways to enhance their capabilities. 

Exhibit a positive attitude and resilience. Growth-minded sales people are strong-minded and resilient. They are always enthusiastic to learn new things and work extra hard to achieve their sales quotas.  Their typical internal dialogue is: “What are the customers’ hot buttons? What can I do to conquer my key strategic customers? Where can I add real value? Where should I spend time, resources and energy to leverage my sales performance? Who are the key network brokers in this territory?”  A strong disciplined mindset leaves no room for negativity.

Embrace an entrepreneurial attitude. The sales executive with an attitude focused on growth takes care of their sales territory as if they owned the company. They are constantly looking for ways to add value to their team, organization and clients. These sales execs act as protagonists: focus on the real facts, ask hard questions that go to the core of the performance issue, and use their network to uncover the root cause of problems. 

How to Foster a Growth Mindset 
Here are some valuable recommendations for sales leaders, should you have team members deemed salvageable, yet exhibiting the victims mindset:

• Management support. Top management must drive the growth mindset agenda on their organizations.  Frequently outline performance expectations, the company objectives and offer internal training to overcome objections.
• Culture. Build a sales organization culture in which a growth mindset is the way of thinking—that offers benefits for individuals and the organization as a whole.
• Hiring. Recruit people who love big challenges, who want to grow, and who want to collaborate. Consider adding personality/psychological testing to the hiring process to determine the probability of getting a new sales rep with tendencies towards a victim’s mindset.
• Feedback. The language sales leaders adopt is crucial to developing a growth mindset. As a sales leader, praise effort not ability.  As a leader, demonstrate that you are in the game with your team, not watching, appearing detached, distant, and disinterested in anything but the wins.  Be a coach and champion of each person.  Remember, you hired them, do all you can to help them be successful.
• Learning. Provide “growth mindset workshops” and encourage discussion groups. Growth mindset can be learned and developed. Research studies show that 88 percent of people who learned a growth mindset wanted to dig into the ideas and concepts that would improve their negotiation skills.  People who learn a growth mindset and work around people who exude such a perspective have significantly better negotiation outcomes than their negatively oriented counterparts. 

Get busy fixing the victim’s mentality and negativity on your sales team.  It’s one of the very best investments you will ever make for your business.

If you have problems getting maximum potential and performance from your Sales Team, then maybe its time to engage with an objective outsiders evaluation.  ENCORE! 2.5 has worked with the Victim's Mindset and many other performance inhibiting problems companies experience in growing their businesses.  If you would like to know what we do and how we do it, CALL - 1.267.356.1949 or EMAIL - encore2pt5@gmail.com


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