"If you'll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives."
Vince Lombardi
Settling, complacency, contentment, relaxed, peaceful; it's out there right now hiding within the closet of many in sales.
Lurking in the dark shadows of success and camouflaged where one least expects to find it, a great balancing act of excuses.
It's the silent business killer, ambushing and striking salespeople without warning. It can bring even the biggest and brightest to their knees. What's this hidden terror, settling!
A sales reps' biggest competitor is the status quo
It can happen to you. It strikes with extreme precision. Settling, it happens so please don't fool yourself.
Settling is a ruthless sales disease. It doesn't care about how long you've been in sales or what day of the week it is. It cares only of the cold and timid.
Truth be told, while many sales reps seem content on getting by and blending in with all the other empty suits, a true sales professional is not. They have meticulously rewritten the sales playbook.
"Complacency is the enemy of study. We cannot really learn anything until we rid ourselves of complacency."
Mao Zedong
THE COMFY COUCH
Unguarded, the 'settling' disease has been lurking within personal closets for quite some time. This didn't happen overnight, this happened because of a whole bunch of small personal decisions over time.
Allow me to introduce you to the law of complacency. It states, says when you surround yourself with empty suits, harbor average thoughts, settle for average results, and point fingers everywhere, this all leads to an empty sales life of being ordinary and living a mediocre existence.
Why is this happening?
LACK OF GOALS
Your budget number, sure it's a goal, however; what about your personal goals?
What's your vision and values? Are you operating with a wish or hope list rather than a must have list? Where's the burning desire? Where's the drive? Where's the fortitude? Where's the plan?
What has led you down the path you're taking right now?
You can have growth or you can have comfort, but you can't have both
INCONSISTENT SALES MANAGEMENT
From personal experiences, most sales manager's focus on the under-performers; spending less and less time focusing on the top performers. I’ve been in bullpens and heard mutterings of “I don’t care what they’re doing as long as they’re hitting their numbers”.
Coach, coach and coach! This is why sports dynasties exist.
Inconsistency leads to consistent trips to the empty suit cleaners.
TIRED AND CONTENT
Often times this radiates with those in sales who have been with the same company for decades or within the same industry for eons, doing the same thing; particularly if their sales role hasn’t progressed.
You all know what I am talking about. I'm referring to all those sales reps who have been seeing the same clients for years. Day after day, month after month talking about the same products, same services to the same people, monotony of their activity shows up in their attitude towards pushing themselves to the next level; leading to apathy, complacency and taking their clients for granted.
"Salespeople have hypnotized themselves into believing what they aren't doing doesn't work"
Unless these sales reps find a way to invigorate more energy and interest back into their role, most will just mutter along in mediocrity until something shakes them out of the state they are in. Unfortunately, this translates into losing a client or the threat of losing their job.
Are you willing to surround yourself with unreasonable sales professionals who share unreasonable expectations, who hold themselves accountable for lofty and unreasonable outcomes?
You are the sum total of the 5 closest people you associate with, are they empty suits?
STOKE THE FIRE WITHIN YOU
Where's the drive? Stoke the fire of passion and pride that drives you to do the hard work to be a true One-Percenter. Ignite the fire from within!
In order to be extraordinary and rise above the sea of empty suits, you must abandon your excuses, limiting self-beliefs, and damaging thoughts. I encourage you to replace them with a set of higher self-expectations.
“Belief is an emotion which creates certainty."
Tony Robbins
Sales professionals...
- Have unreasonable sales dreams
- Have unreasonable sales goals
- Take unreasonable sales leaps
- Have unreasonable sales thoughts
- Take unreasonable action
- Are not sales conformists
SALES PROFESSIONALS DON'T SETTLE, THEY CREATE CHANGE
A true sales professional has acute awareness and a total understanding that acceptance of change is critical, especially in times of uncertainty and doubt within the sales world. This applies directly to the settler's mentality.
We have only three responses to change - resist it, accept it or create it.
A change resistor likes things just the way they are. A change acceptor will wait to see what is happening. While change creators have become today's problem solvers.
Sales professionals are change creators. They take charge of your journey. They take the journey of self-discovery.
Right now, at this very moment in time... Who are you? Why are you doing what you're doing?
"When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves."
Viktor E. Frankl
DON'T SETTLE, DO THE WORK!
John C. Maxwell said:
“People are like rubber bands, they are most effective when they are stretched.”
Are you stretching? Have you settled somewhere in your sales life?
- What doors could you open by stretching towards your vision?
- What new sales opportunities could you experience?
- How would this make you feel?
A sales professional creates change and pulls organizations forward.
A sales professional takes massive action!
A sales professional identifies new processes, looks for new opportunities, brings new and different insights into businesses with the goal of helping to solve real business problems and challenges.
A sales professional adopts the mentality focused on helping for all the right reasons versus closing the "big deal" for their personal benefit.
"We won't figure out what's sacred in life if we settle for what's safe."
Bob Goff
I understand, I get where you all are coming from. Every day, I walk in your shoes. I am fully committed to helping your sales team integrate social aspects and heartfelt strategies into your current sales process to grow new business. I want you to get results. This is why I am passionate about doing this the right way, the genuine way, the authentic way! It's about understanding value before visibility.
Selling From the Heart is making a difference! I poured my heart into every page of this book and I think you're going to love it. You can find it on Amazon in paperback, kindle and in audio. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.
In a world full of empty suits, I'm passionate about helping sales reps succeed by getting valuable before they get visible. I help sales teams understand the true value they bring to the market.
I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my stories. Integrating the use of social and sharing my story on LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive office technology world. With great pride I transform, challenge, coach and inspire sales teams to grow new business by helping them share their story and how they communicate it out by integrating the use of social inside the sales process. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.
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