Article by Mark Keating – CEO of Sales Guru
On 13 January, three people won the American Powerball lottery and shared a massive US 1.6 billion, the equivalent of R26.56 billion!
In the lead up to this, I spoke with friends in America who were excited about the opportunity of winning such a huge payout. They were sharing all the things that they would do with the money … where they would travel, what they would buy, quitting their jobs etc.
It was amazing to see the sparkle in their eyes when they were sharing all of the things that they would love to do with the money. For many, it was the first time in years that they had actually ‘dreamt’ about things that excited them and it took a Lottery, based purely on LUCK, to do this.
Unfortunately for them and millions of others, the odds on winning were around 292 million to one and their dreams did not come true. Even more unfortunate is that very few have a ‘Plan B’ for success.
What is your plan for sales success in 2016? Too many people in sales are still treating their sales roles and potential customers as a lottery to success and living on a strategy of hope. Hope is not going to get you to exceed your sales objectives for 2016.
Far too often I come across salespeople in the graveyard of broken dreams, unfulfilled goals and minimum success. The first cause for this is that they don’t believe that they can achieve and exceed their sales target for 2016. The second cause is that not enough DAILY ACTION is being taken, with salespeople continuing to waste time on non-sales essential activities.
If you really want more, you need to call more, see more, discover more, present more and close more.
The top tips I can share on taking immediate and ongoing daily action are as follows:
- Everyone is capable of doing more than what they currently are and achieving better results – this is something we all know too well.
- You, your colleagues, competitors and everyone else only have around eight working hours in the day; use this time wisely.
- Time block for essential selling activities i.e. allocate prospecting time on a daily basis, allocate time for all forms of potential client meetings. EVERYTHING ELSE IS SECONDARY TO THIS!
- Protect this time and stick to this for 30 days.
If you really want to sell more, earn more and achieve more, commit to this and DO MORE for the month of March and see the results start to snowball.
If not, well there is always the Lotto …
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