Sales Coaching: Resolutions or Committments?

Now that the annual nonsense of New Year Resolutions is finished, time to take a look at making something really happen for yourself and your selling during 2005. Read on and pay attention, I'll be asking questions later....and these thoughts apply even if selling is not your business....you are your business.

#1 Go for only THREE things

When you returned to work, turkeyed out, and you made your list of "Things To Do"for 2005, did you get palpitations at the sheer number of items you noted? If you surveyed the year ahead thoroughly, you maybe had 50 -100 items listed....panic!......"I'll never get all that done"...."This will kill me"..."Where do I start?"
Can I suggest you start again and look at it in a different way?
Note down only THREE things you are going to accomplish this year. Make them stretching for yourself , but not OTT. This will generate various sub-lists of "bites"of the work you need to tackle, but mentally you are certain of what you are trying to accomplish, and you see where the "bites" fit into your big picture.....the bites have meaning, give you purpose, and consequently give you a sense of satisfaction as you tick them off your list.

And perhaps one of those things should be to consider our new Sales Development programme specifically designed for experienced sellers. "Unlock Your Selling Mind"is revolutionary. You will never see your prospects, customers, and clients in the same light again...Guaranteed.

To read the Introduction to this Unique new workshop, click on this link:

To read the Introduction to this Unique workshop, click on this link: Unlock Your
Selling Mind

#2 Reduce Your Targets!

You'll be so lucky...;-))....What I mean is that we often set ourselves a target that is way beyond what we are presently hitting, and Mt. Everest appears in front of us. It's pointless to set yourself a monthly personal sales target of €50K if your present performance level hovers around €30K per month. Yet I frequently see sellers attempting this Himalayan feat in the burning light of a bright new year.

Be sensible........15%- 25% is a reasonable growth rate to aspire to and reach...it stretches you, but is achievable and will give you that satisfied feeling you live for. Just suppose you increased your yearly sales by 15% each year for the next few years. What level would your business have reached at the end of year five?....I'l take that, thank you very much.

#3 Go for Mars, not the Moon!

Sounds like a contradiction of #2?....not really. Let me tell you a story.......
Back in the early 1980's when I first set up my own training company, we were firmly in "Death Valley Curve" ( Harvard Business School gave this name to the first three years in a start-up business....money flowing out far faster than it is coming in as you build your business to break even).
A friend with an original mind suggested this idea to me. I called in my three sellers and challenged them with, "What would we need to do to invoice four times as much as usual next month?". When their laughter subsided they realised I was serious. Monthly invoicing was running at £10K per month- those were the days when a punt was a punt -and I made the reward deal tasty enough for them to look at each other, and I could see the cogs of their small but beautifully formed minds beginning to wonder how much of the reward they could claim.
What happened next was quite extraordinary...they contacted every lead they ever had logged, they contacted "orphans", they became really creative is gaining decisions and committments, they covered each other (the reward was both individual and team based), they pulled monkeys out of hats where there weren't even hats.......

Alas, at the end of a frantic month they didn't reach their target. They didn't reach the £40 K bulleye. But they did reach £36K! 360% over the normal in four weeks!....God, I love sales people....they can be awkward, stubborn, sarcastic of head office staff, a pain in the butt sometimes...but they are magnificent and hugely talented when challenged....What?....Of course they got their reward! Their efforts made a huge difference to cash -flow and that was the last time we bottomed out.....MacCabe Training became a legend in it's own lunchtime and twenty three years later has evolved into Great Expectations Coaching and is firmly established as a market leader in it's home territory of the Republic of Ireland, with clients and associates in UK, Holland, Switzerland and Kenya.

On an irregular basis afterwards, I'd spring a similar challenge and the sellers loved it. If they thought the gap between had been too long, they were known to bring the matter up at sales meetings on at least two occasions. Don't you just love them?

You too can do with "Can Do".

Good luck for 2005 and may you be (modestly) embarrassed by the increase in your sales at the end of the year.

Maitiu
www.greatexpectationscoaching.com

Read this revealing introduction: Unlock Your Selling Mind