It is easy to get down on yourself in the world of sales if you have had a bad month, quarter, or even a down year. But if you hold onto those negative thoughts about your sales performance, it will not help you to achieve your sales goals.
As simplistic as this may sound, if you are a negative person, sales will always feel like a struggle. As a positive person, sales becomes much more enjoyable and can be very fulfilling. You will also produce far greater results with a positive mind-set in sales.
Being a positive person has been a significant part of my own success and below are some of the key practices I have followed to be a positive person in the world of sales: (more…)
1. Say “Thank You.” Thank one of your clients, team members, or peers daily.
2. Smile. Having a rough day at work? Just experienced a heavy dose of sales rejection? Don’t forget to smile, it will make you feel better and you might be the only smile someone else sees all day. Try it right now, and you will feel better.
3. View The World Of Sales As The Ultimate Test. View challenges with a customer, problems with your boss, and mistakes that you make during the sales process as “sales training” and valuable sales lessons. Learn to look at difficult experiences as lessons versus failures or mistakes. (more…)
Here are 20 quick tips to help you increase your sales productivity. Keep in mind, not every tip will be useful for every person. Just pick the tips that are helpful for you and integrate them into your routine.
Here are a few suggestions when reading through all of these tips:
-Don’t do them all at once. Focus on one at a time.
-Experiment with different tips.
-These are not in any particular order, so browse through them all.
So, here they are, 20 tips to increase your sales productivity:
1. Less is more. Focus on your most essential tasks each day. Eliminate or delegate as much as you can.
2. Exercise. Make this a habit if it is not already. For me, exercising is the key to my energy, health, and productivity. It also greatly reduces stress and can be a form of meditation. Here are some tips on how to make exercise a daily habit. (more…)
“Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose–a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.” -Mary Shelley
1. Get Inspired Everyday. Inspiration is one of the best motivators, and it can be found everywhere. Sources of inspiration can include, but are certainly not limited to: sales blogs, sales articles, sales online success stories, sales forums, peers, friends, sales books, and motivational quotes.
2. Hire A Sales Coach. Working one on one with a sales coach has proven to be one of the most effective methods to truly achieve breakthrough sales results. However, be sure to ask these questions of any sales coach you interview before hiring a sales coach.
3. Have Compelling Reasons For Your Actions. Write them down and know your reasons for wanting to achieve your goals and stay motivated. When you clarify why you want to accomplish certain goals, and what it will mean to you to accomplish them, it will help increase your motivation and keep you on track.
4. Be Ready For Negative Self Talk. Become very aware of that inner voice that says you should just quit and give up. One of the most powerful things you can do is to simply raise your awareness and recognize when it is happening. Just by naming the negative self talk alone, it will help you consciously decide what you need to do. (more…)
2. Set your work hours. If you don’t set hours, you will risk sacrificing the balance between work and life.
3. Create a room that is dedicated for work only. It is essential you separate your work from your home life so that when you enter your home office, you know what you are there to do, work. It will help you change your mindset from, “I’m working at home” to “I’m at work.”
Tell your friends and family exactly what the room is for, and that even though you are in the house/apartment/condo, you are at work when in that office.
4. Close your office door. This will help remind you, and anyone else who may be at your home, that you are at work.
5. Clear your desk. Only keep what you need on your desk. The less distractions, the better.
6. Disconnect. Turn off your phones, IM, and email alerts when you need to focus on a task. This will not always apply, but try it out for certain tasks and see how it works for you. (more…)
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain
1. Track Your Sales Progress. Decide what you want to specifically track and then create a printed chart for your desk, track information on-line, or write it down in a training log.
It is difficult to see how you are progressing if you have no data on where you have been. By witnessing your own progress, it will give you a nice little boost of motivation.
2. Don’t Try To Crush Your Sales Goal Right Away. Have you ever started a new workout and been totally pumped up for the first few days, only to loose momentum?
Well, instead of using 100% of your energy in such a short period of time, take some positive steps and give 75% effort, but don’t push so hard that you loose the energy and passion for the goals.
Retain some of that energy by pacing yourself effectively and slowly increase the amount of effort from there. This will help you ease into what is often a totally new positive habit you are forming, and it will keep you engaged and looking forward to getting more done the next day. (more…)
Stress is the trash of modern life – we all generate it but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life. ~Terri Guillemets
Identify Your Work Stress. Before you can eliminate or reduce stress, you must know what you are dealing with. Write down all the stresses that you deal with on a daily and weekly basis. Then create a top 10 list of all the things that cause you stress and determine which items you can eliminate from your list.
Shorten Your Scheduled Meetings. Consider cutting many of your 60 minute meetings to 30 minutes and your 30 minute meetings to 15. With a shorter time frame to work in, you will be forced to be more productive.
Stop Procrastinating. Allowing work to pile up will stress you out. Plan time to get things done and off your desk.
Get Organized. Disorganization can cause a significant amount of workplace stress. Block time to get things organized. (more…)
In the world of sales, finding ways to increase productivity and get more done in less time is essential to achieving great sales results, making more commissions, working less, and having more personal free time.
Here are 10 sales coaching tips to boost your productivity to new levels:
1. Most Important Things First. The most important task you need to get done each day should take priority over all other tasks. However, we all know that interruptions can pop up and the important task often gets put off.
If you put the most import thing off until later in the day, they often don’t happen. Your goal should be to get your most important things done first thing in the morning before doing anything else.
2. Wake Up Earlier. Get up just 30 minutes earlier and you can get a jump start on some of your most important tasks for the day. Decide what you’d like to accomplish each morning, and design your routine around your most important tasks. (more…)
1. Get Started! There will be some days you just don’t feel motivated to complete your sales activities and everything you do will feel like an uphill battle.
Instead of focusing on how hard the task is, or how long it will take you to complete it, tell yourself you just have to get started. Many times, getting started is the hardest part. Once you actually start, it is generally not as hard as you thought it would be. (more…)
Excuse #1: “I Don’t Have Enough Time To Prospect or Focus on Sales Related / Dollar Productive Activities.”
Solution: Create Time.
Sales professionals of all levels and business owners who achieve extraordinary levels of success have days just as hectic as everyone else, right? Yet somehow they make prospecting a part of their daily or weekly activities.
So how do they do it? They create the time. You can instantly create time if you begin to plan ahead and stay committed. This means planning your days and weeks. One of the best time-creating techniques is to schedule prospecting or selling time on your calendar and delete unimportant activities. (more…)
I have worked successfully from a home office in various sales roles in the past, and there are many benefits from working at home; however, there are also many dangers.
Sales managers and sales professionals need to be aware of potential pitfalls.
Avoid the following dangers and you will be able to create a highly productive home office environment.
Never Shutting Off The Work
One of the main problems with working from home for sales people is that you are technically always at work. It becomes very hard for your mind to separate your free time and your work time. This can result in an unbalanced life-style and addictive work behaviors. Some common negative habits that are formed consist of constantly checking emails, always taking calls even during non-working ours, and working well into the night. (more…)
What if you could create all the positive habits you wanted in your life, business or career, right now, to make an immediate impact?
Well, you can, and below are 4 tips to get you started on creating new positive habits.
1. Identify What You Want To Change: Find the areas in your life, business or career that you want to change. Make a list of all the changes you want to make. Next to each item, write down the new habit or habits that would need to be formed to make the necessary changes. At this stage, do not worry about how you are going to form all of these new habits. (more…)
1. Decide To Be Successful: Make the conscious choice to be successful. Own it now! Deciding to do something is the first step towards success. This is a critical step which is often overlooked.
2. Focus Your Mind: Get clear on what you desire. Ask yourself: What do I truly want? What does success look like to me? How will this achievement change my life, business or career? How can I use this success to make a difference for others? Understand what you want, why you want it, and what it will do for you. (more…)
Have your tried everything possible to motivate your sales team but still are not seeing the results you crave? Have you tried everything listed below?
How To Stay Motivated – 45 Tips To Help Stay Motivated
I posted the following question on LinkedIn.com: “What is your best single tip to help an individual stay motivated?” Below are some of the perspectives, ideas, and tips. Do you have other ideas or suggestions on how to stay motivated? Please add them within the comments section.
1. Do what you are passionate about! The rest comes naturally. -Kimberly Yow
2. “The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.” Quote by Bobby Knight -Kevin Maloney (more…)
This list is an attempt to shine a spotlight on what it takes to achieve great success in business. Please add your ideas in the comment section below. Which of these would make your list and what should be added?
Zen To Done is a simple system to get you more organized and productive, and keep your life saner and less stressed, with a set of habits.
Zen To Done takes some of the best aspects of a few popular productivity systems (GTD, Stephen Covey and others) and combines them with the mandate of simplicity. It makes things as simple as possible, and no more.
Buy the ZTD system in a handy e-book, with additional material, resources and forms: (more…)
Many studies, such as Amen Clinics Research, illustrate the importance of a positive mind for physical health, mental health, creativity, productivity, focus, discipline, fulfillment, imagination, and dedication. All of these benefits have a direct impact on living more fulfilling lives and experiencing better results in business.
Brain scans show that a positive mind is much more active than a negative mind, and active in the areas critical for many of the benefits above. My focus here is on how to be more positive and if you are already in a positive state, how to enhance it further.
This is Dorothy Carnegie’s summary of her book, The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking, from 1962, which is based on Dale Carnegie’s Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business, from 1931.
There are some great public speaking tips here:
Fundamentals of Effective Speaking (Public Speaking Tips)
1. Acquiring the Basic Skills
Take heart from the experience of others
Keep your goal before you
Predetermine your mind to success
Seize every opportunity to practice (more…)
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?’ Actually who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world.(more…)
This question was asked on linkedin.com. “Motivation! As a sales professional, what motivates you and drives you to achieve success?” Below is my public answer.
This is a great question. I have found that working with 100’s of sales professionals at various levels, that they all have very different internal drivers that motivate them. I believe also that there is no right answer here, however, I challenge my clients to dig deeper, much deeper, to really get to what they truly want, and why achieving certain results is really important to them.
The Essential Motivation Handbook – Learn How To Motivate Yourself Now!
With The Essential Motivation Handbook you’ll have all the tools you need to push past any obstacle that might be holding you back. ‘The Essential Motivation Handbook’ is your ticket to finally getting things done and moving past the mundane!
Here is the table of contents, listing the powerful insight you’ll find in this ebook about motivation:
1. How To Motivate Yourself
2. The Only Two Secrets to Motivating Yourself You’ll Ever Need
3. A Guide to Beating the Fears That Are Holding You Back
4. Task Ninja: Form the Action Habit
5. Top 20 Motivation Hacks (more…)
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Dr Wayne Dyer
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?’ Actually who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. 
This question was asked on linkedin.com. “Motivation! As a sales professional, what motivates you and drives you to achieve success?” Below is my public answer.