Fixed Mindset vs Growth Mindset: How To Unlock Your Potential As A Young Salesperson

Developing the right attitude and mindset is essential to reach your maximum potential as a young salesperson. It will positively impact your confidence, how you approach difficult situations, create relationships with clients, and the deals you close.

One of the biggest misconceptions among young sales potentials is that they don’t think they have what it takes to reach their ambitions. It’s up to you if you are willing to do what it takes to adopt the right mindset. 

To do so, you must know the differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Understanding these two mindsets will give you an edge when dealing with difficult situations and potential customers. 

Fixed mindset vs growth mindset: how does it impact your career?

Before we look at how it impacts your career, you need to understand what both mindsets mean & how they can positively or negatively impact your sales career. 

What is a Fixed Mindset?

A fixed mindset believes that our skills, abilities, intelligence, and talent are fixed traits – something innate that can’t be changed or improved over time. With this way of thinking, people become afraid of failure due to the fear of not being good enough or not having the ability needed for success. 

A similar attitude prevents people from taking risks and trying new things because they are too anxious.

What is a Growth Mindset?

A growth mindset is one of the most important weapons to tackle and handle all the fears of a fixed mindset. People with this attitude believe they can grow and improve their skills over time by embracing challenges and learning from mistakes along the way. This thinking encourages you to take risks and try new things.  

By doing this, you see failure as an opportunity to get more knowledge and experience, eventually leading you toward success instead of seeing it as an endpoint. 

We disguise a growth mindset often under the term ‘being coachable,’ but it is a constant process that lasts a lifetime and is something you must build habits around. It’s about asking yourself the right questions. Thanks to sales, we at Headlight started to understand this mindset because, in sales, you run into many walls. To overcome these walls, we wrote an article about how to optimize your tech sales career in the early stages. 

In short, if you are willing to admit you don’t know something and are seeking advice, you have the right mindset to develop your career positively. 

4 reasons to adopt a growth mindset to elevate your career

We’ve been observing the remarkable effects of having a growth-oriented mindset for years now. Whether it’s achieving long-term goals or tackling new challenges, this approach is essential for success.

We’ve identified four key benefits based on our own experiences that come from adopting a growth mindset. The four reasons we talk about below had the biggest impact on our careers. Thanks to this approach, we are equipped with the right mindset to face challenges that come our way.

1. Your past doesn’t define your future

A growth mindset can be the key to unlocking your full potential, no matter what path you choose. It allows you to shake off the confines of any pre-existing labels and expectations; it gives you the courage and agency to break into tech sales. 

If you adopt a growth mindset, you will understand that your early experiences don’t define you. You can take advantage of opportunities as they appear in order to build the career you want. You don’t need to settle for a predetermined path or for the expected. Instead, use your growth mindset as an incentive to create something entirely new.

2. It cultivates perseverance

Despite the challenges we’ve faced since the founding of Headlight, we never threw in the towel. Instead, we used our setbacks as learning opportunities and grew from them. We harnessed our perseverance and resourcefulness outside our team of two to become a team of six. 

Through embracing a growth mindset, failure has become an inevitable part of our success: we no longer fear it but instead view it as an opportunity for learning and development.

3. Negative feedback as a catalyst to become stronger

It’s in our human nature to receive negative feedback and wallow in our sorrow. But that’s not the right mindset. Make sure you are built differently. We, for example, view every critique as an opportunity for professional and personal improvement. We recognize that these reactions are essential stepping stones in the journey toward success, allowing us to become more resilient and productive versions of ourselves.

Rather than fixating on the momentary pain associated with the critique, we focus on what this feedback can do to help us reach our full potential. In doing so, we go from simply existing in our career to living it – embracing each challenge and using it as fuel for future development.

4. It makes you eat crow

A growth mindset makes you humble. It makes you realize that there will always be more to learn and that you can not always be correct. You will be more open to the opinions of others and will be able to engage in thoughtful dialogues. 

How Does A Growth Mindset Positively Impact Your Career?

We take a moment to connect the dots by listing the most important benefits once again. Having a growth mindset can immensely benefit your career as a sales rep by building resilience so you don’t give up easily when faced with the following: 

• Challenging tasks or demanding clients; 
• Developing problem-solving skills, so you know how to approach problems effectively; 
• Strengthening communication skills, so you learn how best to deal with customers; 
• Improving creativity by constantly coming up with novel ideas; 
• Increasing motivation levels, so you stay committed even during hard times; 
• Building self-confidence helps you handle difficult conversations much better when dealing with customers.

Furthermore, a growth mindset increases your chances of reaching long-term goals because it gives you the courage to chase them without giving up quickly.