Salespeople do some of the hardest and most important work in the vast majority of companies and yet often are the "scapegoat" when things go wrong.

All this negative energy directed towards sales people often starts to seep into our own psyche and starts us off on a round of pessimism that impacts our performance.  Anyone who has sold anything knows you have to be "up" on yourself every day if you want to sell effectively.

My friend Stuart Scott just wrote the first in a series of articles about appreciation.  This first one is about appreciating yourself. 

If you sell, read this article (and the following ones in the series).  It may seem a little alternative to some but if salespeople appreciate themselves they will have more positive energy and hence will sell more. Hey, I can appreciate that!

This spring I declared into existence The Appreciation Project. Its purpose is to increase the total quantity of appreciation in the world. Just for the fun of it.

I’d like to tell you how the project got started. It grew from a simple observation - that appreciation doesn’t exist until you express it. Merely to feel appreciative doesn’t add to the world’s stock of appreciation. You have to communicate your appreciation for it to have an effect.

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