How To Be Consistently Assertive

Sales Machine reader Rlawren3 writes that his weakest link is:

inconsistency in my level of assertiveness.

However, there's something that's blocking you from doing this. It's probably some kind of trigger than causes you to back off inappropriately in certain situations.

To discover this trigger, you need to "step outside" yourself for a little bit and consider the commonalities of the times where you've run into problems. What was the common element of those times when you wish you had been more assertive?

Once you've discovered the trigger, you need to devise a method for dealing with that trigger so that it no longer makes you non assertive.

For example, if you have a tendency to clutch when talking with CEOs, you must decide to change your belief set so that you're completely convinced that you are as valuable as the CEO to the CEO's firm long-term success.

Or, suppose that you discover that you're less assertive when you've overeaten or not had enough sleep. In that case, you need to make changes to your physiology in order to provide the foundation of health and energy that will allow you to remain assertive, no matter what.

In some cases, though, the problem just might be simple motivation -- you're assertive only when you feel motivated to sell. If so, find ways to make yourself more consistently motivated. Here's a post that can help: Ten Ways to Get Insanely Motivated.
If you're really serious about controlling your emotions to be more assertive at well, you might want to consider spending some education money and attend a Tony Robbins seminar. I learned how to manage my emotions (and how to sell my own writing) by attending several of his programs.

READERS: Comments?

Note: the question above came from the recent post "Free Coaching: Accelerate Your Career" asked Sales Machine readers to identify the weakest link in their sales skill set.