Change sales behaviours to increase performance.
Sales performance is tied to habits and habitual actions. The way we do things impacts results. Improvement is linked to changing sales behaviours.
Most of us have tried changing before, at least for the usual issues, drinking, eating, smoking, and exercise. It can be quite a challenge. While not as obvious, all of our habits resist change. Here are seventeen tried and tested ideas that have helped others adopt new sales behaviours and banish old ones. I can vouch for many of them myself.
- Make an inventory of all the things you will end up with, or have to cope with if you don't alter the behaviour. Extend your imagination into the future and experience how you will feel when envisioned circumstances come about. Changing to increase sales is an easy solution for avoiding any negative consequences of inaction.
- Make a list of what you will gain or experience once you have established the new way. Extend your imagination into the future and experience the joy of your accomplishment. Those in a sales role have an easy option for improving circumstances. Increased sales performance leads to all manner of benefits.
- Play to your nature. With regard to the transformation you are contemplating, which motivates you more, the prospect of success or the fear of failure? Do you mostly think about things going wrong or things going right? Are you better at avoiding danger or do you like a little risk in your life? If you favour caution, use the negative inventory from suggestion 1. It will help you more than the positives. If you like to be on the frontier, make more use of the positive list in suggestion 2.
- Visually destroy the habit you want to stop. Habits are literally enhanced connections between brain cells. The more you do something, the stronger the connection. It becomes like a furrow. If you have ever pushed a full wheelbarrow along a furrow, you know how difficult it is to turn the wheel out of the furrow. See yourself doing the thing you hate. Visualise the scene as a cartoon and then scratch it out, repeatedly, until you destroy the unwanted connection.
- Visually modify the habit you want to alter. Disconnect one end of the connection in your mind and reattach it somewhere else. Visualise what happens and alter it to what you want to happen. Re-write your memory repeatedly until the new habit is established.
- Catch yourself doing it tight. Record the number of times you do the thing you want to do each day or week. Do only this. Make no effort other than to observe yourself doing it right.
- Catch yourself doing what you want to stop. Keep a record of how many times each day you do the thing you want to stop. Do only this. Make no effort to stop other than observing yourself doing the wrong thing.
- Find the fear and feel it. Know it. Pour it out and discard it. Fear hides itself quietly in the background so that we cannot name it and banish it. It sneaks around and nudges us away from our true path. It is subtle and clever and lives in disguise less we see it for what it is, false evidence appearing real. Find it and cast it out.
- Wallow in the triumph of success. Feel as you will when you have completely adopted the new sale behaviours. Know the taste of victory. Count the benefits as if they are already yours. See your better self and hear the praise. Make the command to your unconscious mind undeniable. Make it so.
- Get help from others. Declare your intent to those who care for you. Better still, tell your enemies. Make it public so that you dare not let yourself down.
- Break it up. Divide it into small chunks that you can swallow with ease and with perfect elegance. Don't try to eat the elephant all at once.
- Smell the roses. Reward yourself along the way. Take grace from all signs of progress. Notice when you are 'on course' so that you can notice when you are 'off course' and take corrective action.
- Write it down. The process of writing forces clear articulation of purpose. Even if you never show anyone or even read it again, the act of writing it down will act on your resolve.
- Try Google or your favourite internet search engine. Using the term, "personal change" in quotes, the search returned 368,000 references. Most of the stuff on the first page was relevant and free.
- Examine your beliefs. What beliefs do you hold that contradict the modifications that you want to make? What beliefs support your planned shift? Examine them closely. Some apparent beliefs are mere wrappers that we use to hide less comfortable yet more strongly rooted tenets.
- Examine your values to make sure that you are not trying to make an alteration that contradicts them. Ask yourself the question, 'What is most important to me in life?' Write down all the possibilities and reorder your list according to importance.
- Note the consequences to others. Think of the indirect as well as the direct consequences that others will suffer if you don't act. If you won't make the adjustment for yourself, resolve to make it for the benefit of benefit others.
I hope that this list has stimulated your thinking and that you can apply some of these ideas to change sales behaviours, begin sales development initiatives or increase sales performance. Whatever your intentions, take some immediate action, no matter how slight or insignificant it might seem. Momentum stems from action, any action.
Article by Clive Miller
If you are looking for salesforce development ideas, ways to change sales behaviours or increase sales performance we can help. Telephone +44 (0)1392 851500. We will be pleased to learn about your needs or talk through some options. Alternatively, send an email to custserv@salessense.co.uk for a prompt reply or use the contact form here.
