In all professions it is critical to maintain good relationships with your customers and always appear positive and personable. However this is even more important in sales when you have regular contact with customers. Given the current recession and the economic downturn sales professionals are often finding it tougher to make a sale as businesses are downsizing and cutting costs wherever possible. This article aims to offer some positive thinking tips so that sales people and other professionals can maintain their sales motivation.

Control Your Thoughts: Fight the fear of failure. If you think you are going to do badly you probably will. Those people that say they are unlucky in life are generally doomed to failure from the start as they don't have self belief.

Here's a way of remaining positive. If you are worried about a particular sales meeting try and decipher the worst case scenario. What is the worst that can happen? Generally when you do this exercise you realize that you are worrying unnecessarily rather than focusing on the prize or sales. Remind yourself how good you are at your job and focus on that.

An important point to note is that your subconscious mind is always working whether you like it or not. The thoughts that you have will continue to resonate within your mind unless you change your thought process.

Positive Affirmations: Positive affirmations are a great positive thinking technique that many business leaders and successful professionals use. By speaking and thinking positive thoughts you can regain your positive attitude.

Write a list of things that are important to you in life and then write a positive statement for each in the present tense. For example if have a sales job that you like you could say: 'I am a great sales person with a top sales record'.

Now this tip is not something that you can master overnight unless you already have the power to control your thoughts. For this to work you have to regularly state your affirmations out loud.

Develop Your Own Personal Vision Statement: Everyone has goals in life, they just don't necessarily write them down for whatever reason. Creating your own personal vision statement will help you focus on what is important to you in life. This will allow you to focus more time and energy on what is important as opposed to all the 'noise' of daily life. It helps to have an annual plan and a longer term plan so you can visualize where you want to be in a few years time. Imagine yourself living that life now and it will spur you on to achieve your sales targets.

Adopt an Abundance Mentality: Most people have limiting beliefs about opportunities in life and feel that there aren't enough to go around. It is easy to say that something isn't possible because there is too much competition in a certain area. Adopting an abundance mentality keeps your mind open to new opportunities that others may not see.

Write Down Your Key Achievements: Most of us have a resume so that is a good place to start when developing a list of your achievements. Compiling this list will remind you that you have achieved many things in life and will continue to do so with the right positive attitude.

Write Down Your Key Strengths: Similar to your achievement, write down what you are good at. If this feels uncomfortable then ask a positive friend or love one to help you out. You will be surprised what people say about you and you might find strengths that people see in you that you didn't know you had.

Make decisions: One thing we are all guilty of is analyzing situations in too much detail and never making decisions. Try not to get lost in analysis. Successful people make decisions quickly and change them slowly as opposed to the other way around.

Don't just be busy: Being busy does not win the race. It is important to have a strong work ethic in business and maintain your performance, however maintain your focus on daily action. Action will help you prepare for that sales meeting. This in turn will increase your sales motivation.