Win your internal negotiations

We all have an internal voice that whispers thoughts and feelings that can strongly influence our behaviours.  

Do you sometimes feel like you are negotiating with yourself? 

Maybe it’s about that tub of Häagen-Dazs in the freezer, or perhaps it’s a negotiation about doing lead generation. 

On the one hand, you know you should prospect for new business, and if you did, it would bring you more leads, more business, more money, less stress, and more happiness. On the other hand, you worry about what to say, fear of being judged and rejected, humiliated, and being left feeling diminished. 

This internal battle is so common that a billion-dollar-a-year industry has sprung up around it. There are thousands of people making a living trying to help salespeople, specifically real estate salespeople, overcome their internal resistance to sales.   

This internal negotiation is most often sparked by cognitive dissonance. Lead generation, as it is commonly taught, causes conflict between our deeply held values and the actions that we are expected to take. Calling our friends to have scripted conversations so that we can make money is absurd and will certainly activate deep psychological pain in most of us. You have permission to stop doing it. 

Cognitive dissonance is mental discomfort caused by conflicting attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours. The more you push against that conflict, the stronger it becomes.  

To succeed, you need to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. You do this by changing your perspective. This is a negotiation with your internal world. 

“If a problem can’t be solved within the frame it was conceived,
the solution lies in reframing the problem”

– Brian Mcgreevy

Here are five steps to win it. 

1. Change your internal language. Stop using these words: lead, lead generation, funnel, calls, scripts, closing, prospecting, converting, magnet, and any other language that depersonalizes the process. Replace these words with people, business development, network, conversations, communication, attraction, skillsets, and empathy. 
   
   
2. Separate the Person from the Problem: Both matter and when we address our personal discomfort separately from the skills required to thrive in sales, we can better manage our actions and reduce dissonance.
   
   
3. Gain the necessary skills to have meaningful conversations. Establishing high-level communication and perspective-taking skills will give you the confidence to make people feel at ease and enjoy interacting with you.
   
   
4. Commit to a mindset of curiosity, openness, and learning. Gain the skills to choose your mindset on demand. 
   
   
5. Apply negotiation theory to your internal world. The concepts taught in the AREN course can be directly applied to your internal negotiations, leading you to more success, less stress, and more enjoyment. 

We can’t silence our internal voice, but we can influence it to give us better messages. Real estate is not a lead generation business. It is a profession where we are given the responsibility of helping people make important decisions that will affect many aspects of their lives.  

Shift your perspective on real estate, commit to the five steps listed above, and continue towards mastery in negotiations and communication. This is the fastest way to the top.