There is a small segment of the sales population that we might consider over achievers. There is another similar sized group that we might consider under achievers, relating to their sales performance. The world needs more of the former and fewer of the latter. In the middle, lie the majority of all salespeople, safely protected from their mediocre performance due to the shear size of their majority status. Day in and day out they pursue their average status through their complacent attitudes and uninspiring actions. They are doing the best they can do based on their training and belief. They have never performed any better, they don’t believe improvement is possible and they don’t understand what all the fuss is about. After all, they are performing at the same level as most of their peers. These salespeople don’t even know enough to know that they are capable of far greater success than they have ever achieved.
Let me give you the formula for breaking free from the dominant complacency that holds you captive from achieving your true potential. First of all, memorize the following phrase: “Whatever I vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon, will inevitably come to pass”. You must change your paradigms. Your paradigms are your beliefs, attitudes, values and experiences whose combined influence determines your actions. Let go of all your beliefs that hold you captive to your current performance. Open your mind to the reality that you are capable of doing far more than you have ever achieved before. Here are five ideas that will help you achieve the full measure of your potential:
1. Don’t measure your abilities by what others have accomplished. The only limit to your achievement is your imagination. If you can imagine or visualize something, then you should be able to find a way to achieve it. Your dreams and visions of sales success are not dictated by, or influenced by the achievement of someone else. Focus on what you want, not the plateaus reached by others.
2. To achieve your true potential you will need to focus intently on your dream and work harder than you have ever worked before. Raise your threshold of pain by doing something you don’t like to do every day. You will never achieve your best sales effort until you have reached beyond your comfort zone. Sales success is not easy; if it were, everyone would be successful. Think beyond what you have ever achieved, believing that you can reach it, and only then will you be able to escape the natural barriers that have restricted your performance in the past.
3. No one has ever reached beyond mediocrity without a consistent effort. Doing your best for just one day is not an indication of your best overall performance. Your best effort is the result of a consistent, day-by-day improvement and commitment to achieving your goals. The more days you work to improve, the greater your improvement will become.
4. Think outside the box. You won’t discover your true sales ability by doing what you have always done. Be creative in your approach to success. Just because no one else has done something doesn’t mean it won’t be successful. Your fresh approach and enthusiasm may be the only difference between the success you are seeking and the performance you have typically delivered. Your actions don’t need to be radically different from past performance. Sometimes only very small changes are needed to produce significantly better results.
5. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. If you had the ability to see clearly the end result of what you could achieve in your sales career, you wouldn’t delay in taking action. Well, you can see the end result. Dream, believe, imagine and then take action. You will never deviate from your current path, if you don’t commit to doing something you have never done before. It is totally up to you. Your sales success has nothing to do with the success of others. The determining factor of reaching the full measure of your sales performance boils down to one simple question: What are you willing to do?
