Impact of Motivation and Determination on Professional Sales - Essay Example

Impact of Motivation, Discipline and Determination on Professional sales: An insight from Pursuit of Happyness Course number Date Introduction The Pursuit of Happyness is one of the most motivation movies of all time. Nominated for the Oscar and Golden Globe award, this movie has move a lot of hearts over the world. This movie clearly shows how professional sales can be challenging and how one should overcome those challenges with determination and positive attitude. This paper discusses about how motivation, discipline and determination applies to professional sales in light of the movie Pursuit of Happyness. It also covers how these factors play their role in improving the individual performance of the sales personnel and how the managers utilize these factors to encourage their subordinates to work harder and show commitment to their job role. Discussion The professional performance of an employee, irrespective of its field of work, is largely dependent on his perception and attitude towards his profession. A motivated employee is more efficient than a poorly motivated ort an indifferent employee (Weiner 56). This is mostly because of the fact that an employee who is motivated towards his job role will voluntarily commit to working harder and contributing more to the organizational success. Motivation and job satisfaction are closely related to each other. Although job satisfaction comes from a lot of contributing factors, but the most important one of them all is the positive motivation (Weiner 94). An employee who is satisfied with his job role, working condition, work environment and consideration, are more motivated towards working harder and with sincerity. It can be intuitively stated that all job profiles are not equally easy or difficult. Some can be more difficult and challenging than the others. Pursuit of Happyness has portrayed the life of Christopher Gardner, who is a professional salesman and is struggling with his professional and personal life. The professional life of sales professional can be quite challenging, as he needs to convince his customers to purchase a product or service, by overcoming their barrier of scepticism (Simintiras 391). In the movie, Christopher is a sales man of a bone density measurement device. The device is not very promising in terms of providing clearer pictures and its price. Thus, it has become quite challenging for him to sell the device to the doctors. The professional hurdle has been multiplied further by his personal life issues. He has taken custody of his son and now he has to take care of him. However, despite of the challenges he continued to show determination and positive attitude towards his life and his career. A sales professional has a lot to learn from this movie and what it teaches to its audience. The profession of one on one selling can be considered to be one of the most challenging professions on the modern age (Amue et al 622). An individual needs to sell a product or a service to the customers, by convincing them of its value and features and how it can help them improve their lives. Although it may seem to be quite simple, but its execution can be quite difficult depending on the nature of the products or service being pitched and the mental setup of the customers. Typically, the customers are quite sceptical towards a sales pitch and try to avoid a sales man, which even makes it difficult for them to sell their product. Such challenges bring occasional failure for a sales man and can easily de-motivate him to leave this line of work. However, in order to success in the field of professional sales, one must be sincere and self-motivated to push his way against all odds (Pinder, 269). The movie depicted that Christopher had been pushed down by a series of unavoidable consequences that forced him and his son to spend the night at a public toilet at a train station. Despite of all odds he never lost hope on life and kept pushing till he achieved what he wanted. Christopher showed sheer determination to work his way to turn around his life. In scenarios like this, self motivation played a major role in one’s performance in his professional and personal life. In a profession of a sales individual, failure is quite common where he faces rejection from customers, pressure from supervisors and fear of losing his job. These factors negatively influence their life and often lead to depression and poor professional performance. Motivation Motivation can be considered as a determining factor that drives a person to behave in a particular way (Aryee et al, 176). The movie has set forward a perfect example of self motivation, where Christopher has motivated himself to work harder to provide a better life for himself and for his son. For him, his motivation was his son’s future and giving a better life and setting a good example as being a father. He never lost his hope on his career and his life even if everything went against him. He believed that no matter the situation he can always achieve what he wanted, if he can give sufficient effort and maintain consistency. In a typical situation, an individual loses hope and gives up on trying, when he is constantly being faced with failure and rejection. The movie teaches that one should always hope to achieve success and must keep pushing no matter what the consequences are. One of the significant dialogue given by him says, “… if you have a dream, you must protect it.” It clearly suggests that a sales professional must not be disheartened by rejection from the customers or his work pressure and he must keep a positive attitude towards his life while approaching towards his goals. Discipline The discipline of an individual is the self control that he exhibits to keeping focused in his goal. Leading a disciplined life means that an individual must do what needs to be done, by going out of his comfort zone (Thaiefi, Baharuddin and Idrus, 23). Christopher has set an example of strict discipline and self control, where he worked for long hours in a stock broking company without any pay to secure a permanent job. Such discipline is required to excel in the field of professional sales. An employee needs to show sincerity towards his job role in order to achieve success. He should ensure that he is doing everything that he needs to do without failure and hesitation (Groen, Wouters and Wilderom, 46). This sheer willingness has helped Christopher to overcome the challenges put in front of him. The movie has shown that setting big goals is not enough to achieve success if one is not willing to work hard for it. A disciplined life can be tough, but it is the price one must pay to achieve success. Thus, for a sales person he must work hard towards his goals and maintain a positive attitude towards his job, in order to achieve higher performance and success. Determination Determination is the positive mindset of an individual that pushes him towards his goal by overcoming all the difficult challenges in front of him. A determined person is resolute and firmly stands on his ground against all odds (Pinder 240). Christopher has from the beginning of the story has shown sheer determination to achieve what he wants and he has also taught he son to do so too. In a dialog he tells his son, “… do not let anyone tell what you cannot do”. This suggests that one must not be swayed by temporary rejections and failures in their path. In perspective of a sales professional, determination is the key to their success. A determined sales man will push his way towards closing a sale or convincing a client, even if he is challenged by tough situations and mental trauma. As mentioned earlier, failure and rejection is a part of the job of a salesman. He needs to get over with temporary failures and try till he achieved what he desires. One should keep his focus on his goal and must come out of his comfort zone to achieve it. The movie has wonderfully shown how Christopher was determined to get the job at the investment firm, even if he had to work hard for six months without any pay. Conclusion The movie has painted an exquisite picture of how one can achieve success amidst all odds, by maintaining self-motivation, discipline and determination. It has been found that a sales person may often be faced with failure, rejection and difficult situations which at times may seem to be impossible to overcome. But, irrespective of what the situations are, he must be resolute towards his goals and work hard for to achieve it. Managers often utilize the positive impact of motivation on their subordinates, in order to improve their performance and drive them to work harder for their goals. Determination and discipline are one of the most contributing factors of success, as it helps to overcome difficult situations and also to maintain consistency of effort. Thus, it can be stated that in order for a sales professional to achieve success and perform better he needs to be motivated enough to have a positive attitude towards his job even if it poses to be challenging for him. Moreover, he must be willing to work harder with a disciplined and sincere approach and be determined towards his goals. Works Cited Aryee, Samuel, et al. 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