Yum! Are you eating cookies again after you swore them off on New Year’s Eve? Probably. I’ll bet you’re snacking again if you’re like most people. New Year’s resolutions are notoriously hard to keep. Why not focus instead on what you can do this year that leads to your success instead of making resolutions that are likely to be broken?
No more excuses.
I’ve heard them all. We didn’t have the budget. I didn’t have the time. The buyer was unfair. They wanted too much. My competitor had more experience than I did. The buyer didn’t want to change. The list of excuses goes on and on. This year, make no more excuses.
No more excuses means that you will be more successful. I’m not promising that everything will go in your direction. I can promise you that everything will not go in your direction! What I am saying is that your default position when things don’t go the way you want them to should be something other than your making excuses.
Excuses are simply a free pass for failure. If you can blame someone or something other than yourself you don’t have to take responsibility for what happens. Even more important is that excuses allow you to stay the same. What does that get you? Likely more failure.
When you take action after failure to do something else you just might create the path to a future success. Instead of excuses, analyze what went wrong. What could you do differently in the future? What can you do now to prepare? What did you miss that needs to be addressed now? Ask and answer the questions. Don’t make excuses.
You can even look at failure differently once you’re not making excuses. It’s been said that it took Thomas Edison 10,000 failures before he found a light filament that worked. He didn’t see it that way. He said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
So develop your sales strategies. Accept that some will fail. This year instead of explaining why you couldn’t succeed, plan on what you could do next. Then start doing it.
Start thinking.
Thinking is one of the often forgotten selling skills. Start thinking about your business and what if. What if your largest account went away? Where would you be? What are the conditions that might happen to cause you to lose a large account? What if you couldn’t sell a particular product? How would that impact your business. Now that you know what could cause you to miss your goals you can start to address your shortcomings.
Just remember that thinking without action is like a car without fuel. It’s not going anywhere. Your ideas must be fueled with your actions so something changes and gets improved.
Do something to make you a better salesperson.
Think of yourself like a professional athlete. They work out to maintain their strength or improve their performance. What are you doing to improve?
It’s often said that if you want to be a better writer you should read more. By reading you see what others are doing. Your vocabulary increases. You get new ideas which you an apply.
For selling improvement I would recommend doing more buying.
You notice how you’re treated by the seller when you are a buyer. You often have to negotiate when you buy. If you’re not negotiating, why not? Even your cable bill can be negotiated! (Hint: You can always ask, am I getting the best deal?)
You ask questions when you’re a buyer and learn how knowledgeable your salesperson is. Your awareness as a buyer can help you become a better salesperson. Modify what you do when you realize what you want to improve. You might have to work more on engaging your customer and building rapport. You might have to become more knowledgeable about your competitors.
People who make New Year’s resolutions have the best intentions. They’re just not going about it the right way to get the results they want. Forget about cookies. Stop making excuses, think about your business and improve yourself If you want better sales results this year.