If you’re unlucky enough to fall into Worst Bad Habit Number 5, dwelling on the negative, you’re only a short step away from Number 6, losing respect for your company, your colleagues, and your customers.

Needless to say, this habit is about as bad as smoking three packs of Camel filterless cigarettes a day, only it will ruin you more quickly.

But it happens all the time. Here are some of the symptoms.

• Bad mouthing your company to suppliers or customers.
• Bad mouthing your boss to colleagues.
• Complaining to customers about company policies.
• Turning every after hours get together with colleagues into a bitch session.
• Deliberately undermining a sales meeting with unnecessarily provocative questions.
• Mentally taking all the credit for sales successes and assigning all the blame elsewhere for failures.

If you feel this habit coming on, take emergency action. While these thoughts are natural and occur to all of us at one time or another, acting on them is unprofessional and self destructive. If you have a colleague going down this road, help him or her out. You can make a difference.

New Year’s Resolution!
I will be thankful for my company, my colleagues, and my customers every day. I’ll remember no matter how many mistakes they’ve made, I’ve probably made more.

This is the last in a series of six posts on the Worst Bad Sales Habits.