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evaluatingAs the year draws to a close, it’s important to assess what happened and, more importantly, what you can learn from it to help you gain an advantage next year.

A question I believe strongly in is asking yourself is, “What has changed in my job this past year?”

Ask it with particular focus in looking to identify what are the things you’re now doing differently than you did at the beginning of the year.

Surprising to most people is when you really take the time to think and examine the year, you will uncover a number of items you’re doing differently.

To help you do this, go back and scan emails you sent a year ago. Scan through documents you sent customers.  Look through them to see what’s changed.

A key reason why I value spending time reviewing things from a year ago is sometimes there are things you will find that were quite good and for some reason you’re not doing now.

Why did you stop?  Do you need to start doing them again?

The more we can learn from our own experiences, the more adept we become at being able to handle rapid changes in the marketplace.

If your style of selling, including how you communicate and how you build and deliver presentations, isn’t changing at least 10% a year, I’ll argue you’re going to fall behind.

Example I’ll share is a year ago I didn’t use text messaging to communicate with clients.  My belief was texting is personal in nature and only between people who know each other well.

Today, I text with several clients, as they’ve expressed to me that’s how they prefer to communicate.  I could have chosen to remain old school, but instead I shifted my thinking.

Another example is the use of the cloud for file sharing.  A year ago, I didn’t use it with clients except in a rare situation. Today, I use it frequently.

What processes have you changed? What processes do you need to change?

If you can’t identify things you’re doing differently than a year ago, then you’re falling behind.

Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.

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