Sales Blog for Sales and Sales Management

I'm watching the ESPN Sports Center program this morning and I am inspired to create a post around coaching.  The reason is that often when I am coaching sales managers and sales leaders about their performance, either monthly or year-to-date, I hear:

• 1. Number one in year-over-year growth
• 2. Number one in our district
• 3. Number one in contribution to profit
• 4. Number one with a bad economy and no hope for the future
• 5. Number one in sales of widgets that only gets sold in the months of January

You get my point of the title?  Get it - Coach the tallest first grader - all first graders are short.  It's not a big deal to be the tallest first grader.  So why do we fall back on that rationale when we are clearly failing?  Here is the sports story that prompts this post.  For those that are not sports or baseball enthusiast, please bear with me as I look for statistics on music or artistic standings.  But below you will see the standings for the West Division of the National League of Major League Baseball as of July 21, 2008 (Happy Birthday Ray).

What do you think?  Pretty impressive when you can have a losing record and still be in first place. 

What is my point?  You get my point.  Here are the 5 things that sales people that are failing to hit goal must do in order to get themselves on the right track.  You will notice that none of the 5 has anything to do with a new sales technique or a better business plan.  They have everything to do with either your head or your heart.

• 1. Set you sights higher than "at least'. You know the self talk: "I may not be first but at least I'm not at the bottom".
• 2. Understand that success comes before work only in the dictionary. Which leads me to my point number 3.
• 3. For those of you that tell someone in the morning that you are going to work: Try it. You'll be amazed at the results.
• 4. Make sure that you are working on the right things. This has nothing to do with an effective well thought out business plan. You know exactly what activities allow you to go to the bank with a commission check every so often. Do those activities 80% of the time.
• 5. Stop making excuses and failing and stop accepting luck as a reason for success. It lowers your own expectations and continues the cycle of failure.

Sorry to be so harsh, but I didn't get into this to make friends, just to make people as successful as they ought to be.