Where do you want to be in 6 months? In a year? In 5 years? How are you going to get there? The reality is…
Every week I work with clients who are looking to develop new business. Some of them are brand new sales representatives just starting out and needing to build their pipeline. Some of them are experienced sales professionals, business owners and/or entrepreneurs looking to increase their already good sales.
The new sales representatives don’t know what works – they’re new. The experienced sales professionals are often successful – just not as successful as they’d like to be. I tell all of them the same thing: What got you where you are today may not get you where you want to go. If you want an outcome or result that is different than your current outcome or result, you will likely need to do something that is… different. You may need to let go of some ingrained thought patterns and/or let go of some well ingrained habits.
And that’s always the challenge – because sales professionals, even the ones just starting out, are used to doing whatever it is that they are used to doing. It’s the status quo. The sales professional’s status quo is actually their biggest barrier to success. If you keep doing exactly what you are used to doing you will continue to get the results that you are currently getting.
For the past several months I have been working with a client’s sales team. We work once a week, and at the end of every session I ask each participant in the training session what one item that we discussed that day that they will commit to implementing in the coming week. Each participant makes their choice. Sadly, the following week when I check in to ask who has implemented… There are always participants that have done nothing. Or rather, they are continuing to do exactly what they were doing before… And guess what? Not surprisingly, their results have not changed. While results will not change overnight, Step One is taking action to make them change.
Improving results takes effort. It takes a willingness to do something different… And keep doing that something different until it becomes your new habit. Olympic athletes do not get to the Olympics by doing one training session… And nothing else. The really good news, however, is that anyone who does take up the challenge can explode their sales.