MetLife is a leading provider of insurance and other financial services to millions of individual and institutional customers across the United States, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Europe.
In the mid 80’s MetLife was hiring 5,000 salespeople a year. To ensure their success, they were spending one hundred and fifty million dollars every two years in training costs. That’s thirty thousand dollars per sales rep.
MetLife approached psychologist Doctor Martin Seligman at the University of. Pennsylvania. Seligman developed an Attributional Style Questionnaire, or screening test, that each new MetLife representative completed. The screening test helped isolate the positive and negative mental characteristics of each representative in the group.
Seligman then tracked the sales results of these new MetLife hires for two years.
The result? The agents with an optimistic outlook drastically outsold the pessimists by as much as 21% in the first year and 57% in the second year!
Optimism, by definition, is feeling hopeful and confident about the future or anticipating a successful outcome in some pursuit.
When you are optimistic, you feel like you are in control of your destiny and that you control your own results. Optimists feel they can always do better, always improve, always make more money.
The study found that optimists worked harder in improving themselves – they devoted themselves to daily self-improvement, making self-improvement a daily habit.
As a result, the optimists in the study were able to drastically outsell their negative, unhappy competition and earn more money in the process.
Positivity and negativity is a habit. If you want to earn more money and increase your wealth, you must forge daily habits that put you on autopilot for success. Positivity is one of those habits that puts you on autopilot to become wealthy and successful.
About Thomas C. Corley
This is incredible. Thank you, Tom.