Best of: 6 Things

I originally posted this in 2007:



From my email this week:

Daily Sales Tip: Six Things You Must Stop Doing

In sales as in life, there are things you have to give up so you can go up. Making tradeoffs is part of paying the price to reach your next performance level. Following are six strategies for building a higher degree of excellence and consistency in your career.

1. Stop waiting for something to happen and get busy to make it happen. Stop living passively and take action. You can't sit or wait your way to the next level. You'll have to climb there and that means you need to make something happen...today...right now!

To develop an action-bias, strike early each day and stay in motion all day. Resolve to go from order-taker to order-maker.

2. Stop just putting in more time and begin putting more into your time. It's not important that you get everything done each day; what is vital is that you get the right things done each day!

Work within the disciplines of priorities or you work yourself to death. Identify your highest-return activities and schedule them. Identify your highest leverage customers and make time for them.

3. Stop making excuses and start making results. You can go from failure to success but you can't go from excuses to success because excuses stop you from acknowledging what the real problem is: you.

What is the number one excuse you use to explain away your lack of greater success? Decide to give this excuse up now!

4. Stop treating training like it is punishment. If you don't realize the value of training you are either arrogant, ignorant or both. If you don't think you need training, let me set the record straight for you: You're not that good! Professionals in any field never get so good they don't need to practice, so don't think for a minute you're the exception.

The level of your practice will determine the level of your play: Which skills are you working on this week? Which product or services are you committed to learning more about this week? If you can't be specific, you need to get serious about the selling profession. You can't get more than you have until you become more than you are.

5. Stop planting the seeds to your next rut during the good times. The good times can put you to sleep. They make you believe that since you've "arrived," basic disciplines like prospecting, practicing and planning no longer apply to you. The results of this foolishness don't show up overnight but they will show up over time. It's inevitable. You don't have to do anything extraordinary to make a great living in sales but you must consistently do the ordinary things extraordinarily well.

When you find yourself in a rut, it's not the result of something you did last night. It's a series of bad decisions and failed disciplines you've sown over time that are just now manifesting themselves.

6. Stop hanging around with losers. Don't hang around with an easy crowd because you won't grow.

Spending time with the fellowship of the miserable -- whiners, complainers and gossips, will cut your paycheck in half at the least. Those you associate with on the job influence your values, attitude and discipline. Choose your associations carefully because eventually you become like them. Associate with people who elevate not devastate you.

Source: Sales trainer/author Dave Anderson, president of Dave Anderson's Learn to Lead and LearnToLead .com

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