Start the year off right

As you start your planning for the New Year, below are a few questions you should be asking yourself to give you a clear focus of the areas and goals where you are committed to improving, and to help make sure that this year is your best year ever.

Be Nice

1.How passionate are you about what you do? Loving what you do will ensure that you maintain the positive attitude you need to get to the top. Ask yourself Brian Tracy’s question, “if I knew then what I know now about this job, would I have taken it?”

If the answer is yes, find a way to communicate that passion to your team mates and your clients. Passion and a positive attitude are the glue that hold all your sales skills together.

2. Are your company, colleagues, family and friends life givers who support you in your endeavors, or life suckers who impede your progress? Only life givers can create an environment that fosters success.

3. Do you want to become who you hang out with? Tony Robins says that our success is directly linked to the expectations of the people we associate with. Do you have the right associations? If not, you might have to go to different places, try something new or join new groups to meet new or different people.

4. Are you the “it” person in your industry? Do people see you as a person with valuable information, and come to you first? This year, develop a plan to become the “go to person” for your clients. Studies show it can be worth between $63,000 and $117,000 in extra income for you per year.

5. Do you take responsibility for your actions? You can complain all you want that it was shipping’s fault for getting the order out late, marketing’s fault for not giving you good leads or your manager’s fault for not funding or training you sufficiently. The fact is, in sales, the buck stops with you. Your clients don’t want people who make excuses or whine about being victims. They want agents of success. They don’t care whose “fault it was,” only that you take responsibility for it. What are you going to do this year to take more responsibility?

As a side note, when I interview sales people I always ask them to tell me about an opportunity they lost, and why they lost it. If they blame others for the loss, they do not get the job. I know that sales people who can’t take responsibility, are never going to be in the top 10%

Dedicated to increasing your sales

Colleen