The last quarter’s sales numbers were posted online for the entire sales team to review. There was no hiding once the sales manager sent the email out to his entire team, and Darren hated seeing his name in the lowest 25%. What made him more confused was that he had been with the company for 14 years, yet three of the top five producers had less than half of his experience.
Lauren hated watching the network news or seeing the latest news flashing on her phone. It seemed like the "Big Story" everywhere was another mass shooting, a political meltdown, a plane crash or other sad story. The positive outlook Lauren typically brought to each day had always kept her going no matter what she encountered in her business development activities. But now, so many people she spoke with apparently felt like there was so little certainty left in the world, and some of them wanted her to join in their negativity. Looking at how hard she was working just to maintain some positive momentum, Lauren began to have some doubts of her own about the future.
This post comes from our partner TTI Success Insights' Staff Writer Dave Clark. AS you read this one and find yourself falling into some of these pitfalls reach out and we can talk about person vs. performance and get you back on the right track to being the best you.
It is hard to believe but we are already one month down in 2019. January is over next week even though it seems like New Year’s Eve was a week ago. Time does fly, particularly if you are in sales. That feeling can be exacerbated when you look at that big sales goal you are facing for this year and you look at how slowly you got out of the gate. Do you get the feeling that you are already too far behind and have no chance to catch up? If so, read on and consider changing your approach to achieving your goals.
The blog this week is pretty straight forward, and possibly a bit uncomfortable for some people to digest. For some reason in my coaching interactions with my clients this week an idea just kept tumbling out of my brain and I feel it needed to be shared today.
Here it is:
If you are in sales (and lots of other things like owning a business, running a race, skiing a snowy slope you must decide if you are going to be a VICTIM OR A VICTOR. Let’s think about selling though. Too often when I review someone’s results and ask what happened I am forced to listen to the lament of a VICTIM. The price was too high, the time wasn’t right, the backroom messed it up before, the boss wouldn’t meet with me, the other guy has this account sewn up. All the reasons it sounds right to just accept the results and not expect anything more. In other words, there is nothing I could have done to change the outcome, the deck was stacked against me. The plaintive voice of a victim…
But I have heard the rantings of a VICTOR when I challenge some others. They tell me of the risks they took, the willingness they had to keep going, losing wasn’t an option or the comment that they had nothing to lose by trying something else. These people don’t win every time, but they definitely win more than those that decided that being a victim is OK, or at least they had tried hard enough. Those VICTORS loved to win, but hated to lose even more. Those VICTORS tend to make all the VICTIMS uncomfortable when they see them accomplish the things others didn’t think could be accomplished.
I’d love some responses from people about the moments when they decided they would be VICTORS and what that felt like. I’d also love to hear from some people brave enough to say they are tired of being VICTIMS and willing enough to talk about how to change their beliefs and create their futures.
