People who share their success stories often will focus on one or two large events or decisions, discussing how one huge epiphany was the turning point in their journey. It makes for a good story, and Hollywood loves to make movies about those moments, but reality is often very different.
Success does not usually come from one huge decision. It comes from thousands of small ones, consecutively stacked on each other by repeated and disciplined actions. All the huge epiphanies in the world are feckless if they are not accompanied by a daily habit of proactively selecting and acting your choices. A beach is made up of millions of sand granules, and so is success.
In that spirit, here’s my list of the top decisions you need to make daily to create sales success.
1 – Kill the negative self talk. Your brain is a muscle, and like a muscle, it responds to repeated stimuli. Choose the narrative that your inner voice uses carefully. Calling yourself stupid, worthless or a failure creates a response in your brain. It takes it as instructions. Critiquing your performance is healthy, but ask better questions like, “What could I have done differently?”
2 – Choose your entourage and drop the naysayers. If you hang out with people who complain all the time, your worldview is focused on the times when things don’t work out. This INCLUDES on social media. If someone is always painting rain clouds in your pictures, stop giving them access to the paint brushes. There are plenty of people who focus on the positive. Hang out with them. They throw better parties anyways.
3 – Focus on activity. Goal setting is great, but goals don’t materialize because you thought about them all day. Nail down what your daily activity numbers are, and focus on doing them and doing them well. My very first sales success came when I truly embraced my supervisor’s instructions. X number of meetings set/day, and Y number of meetings held/day. Results come from activity, in sales and in life.
4 – Take care of the machine. That means work out, eat right, get enough sleep and don’t over indulge in guilty pleasures. Really, unless you have the flu, there’s no legitimate excuse to binge watch 7 episodes of The Walking Dead in a row.
5 – Pay it forward. The human mind and spirit thrives when we are impacting others. Find a way every day to lift someone else up. That could be a thank you card, a “nice job” message. It doesn’t have to be someone’s birthday for them to hear that they matter to you, or that something they did made a difference, or that you just appreciate them. Think of how it makes you feel when you get one of those messages. Why wouldn’t you want to give that to others.
6 – Listen first. Ask questions and look to understand others before you try to have them understand you. It’s the best of the 7 habits. Sales is about understanding our client’s needs, first and foremost. One of my mentors always says that we should only be talking about 30% of the time. That’s a hard line to hold, but it makes a huge difference. Yesterday, one of my clients talked himself out of all 3 of his objections, because all I did was kept asking him to clarify and elaborate. People love to buy, and they usually hate to be sold. If you’re talking too much you’re selling too much.
None of these things are complicated. None of them are huge or elaborate. Done daily however, they can move your world.