Are you holding on to “legacy beliefs” that keep limiting your sales potential?
Don’t kid yourself. We all have some legacy beliefs that are holding us back. The most common ones look like this — the belief a particular customer is only good for “x” amount of business or there’s no way “I could ever achieve that level of sales long-term.” Can you relate to these?
I have yet to meet a salesperson who is not holding onto beliefs that in the end are truly holding them back. The one that really rips me apart is the belief many salespeople have that they just aren’t that good and they’ll never be at the top of the pack in terms of sales. Who knows where we come up with these beliefs. That’s not the point anyway. The issue is how do we get rid of them.
First thing you have to do is only allow yourself to be exposed to top-performing, positive people. I’m a firm believer we become who we hang out with. Want proof? Look at somebody’s dog. Isn’t it amazing how many of them wind up looking and acting like their owner? OK, kidding aside, I’m very serious about this issue of only hanging out with successful people. If this means cutting lose some of the people with whom you’ve been associating, then do it. Don’t kid yourself — negative, average-performers are pulling you down.
Second, you have to be passionate and driven about achieving your goals and not allowing excuses or anything else to creep into your mind set. Top performing people don’t make excuses. They accept full responsibility and find a way to get it done.
Third, set a goal each week to achieve slightly more than what you did the week before. I call this the 1% CIP factor. CIP stands for Continuous Improvement Process. What it means is each week you work to improve your sales process by 1%. Think about that — it’s not that tough.
How difficult can a 1% improvement be each week? I’ve written several articles and blog postings on this subject because I passionately believe in it. If you increase your sales process by just 1% each week and you do it every week for a year, you will have improved your sales process by more than 50%.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that your sales result will be up by an equal percentage. Sorry. I will tell you that if you increase your sales process by 50%, you’ll at least see a 5, 10, or maybe even a 20% increase in sales. Now who wouldn’t take that kind of increase? Better yet is the fact that because you’ve increased your sales process, the growth in sales will continue year after year. That’s the best kind of growth anyone could ask for.
Getting rid of your legacy beliefs is not something you can leave to someone else. You’re the only one who can deal with it, but in the end by dealing with it, you’ll find your level of sales motivation rocketing to a new high. With that you’ll find the ability to keep on pushing your numbers higher and higher.
Copyright 2011, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
