Your sales success depends on you reaching your full potential. Knowing these nine “laws” may help you reach your sales goals with customers:
- The Law of Intentionality. Ask yourself “Where do you want to go in life?” Personal growth doesn’t happen automatically. Make yourself take action, today. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Remember the question by Robert Schuller: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?”
- The Law of Awareness. You can’t experience personal growth if you don’t know yourself and understand what you want to do and achieve. This requires self-exploration. Find role models who live the kind of life that you want for yourself, study them and pattern yourself after them.
- The Law of the Mirror. To work to improve yourself, you must believe that you’re worth the effort. “We can do very few things in a positive way if we feel negative about ourselves,” said Zig Ziglar, sales trainer. Most people with low self-esteem don’t try to grow. To improve your self-image, speak positively about yourself. Don’t measure yourself against people around you. Applaud yourself when you do something well.
- The Law of Consistency. Taking the steps necessary to grow each day requires discipline. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction,” George Lorimer said. Give yourself a good chance to change inside. Start with the simplest challenges and move forward. “I work on the same principle as people who train horses,” said industrialist Ian MacGregor. “You start with low fences – easily achieved goals – and work up.”
- The Law of Reflection. Take time to reflect about what you’re learning from your own experiences. Stopping to reflect is essential to achieving success. At the end of each day, try to play back the tapes of your performance. The results should either applaud you or prod you.
- The Law of Design. Carefully plan your life. Develop deliberate, repeatable disciplines to help you achieve your goals. Organize your work and become consistent in how you structure your day.
- The Law of Pain. Gain something positive from the bad events in your life, such as when you fail to close a prospect after a lot of hard work. Turn them into opportunities to learn. Temporary pain or discomfort means nothing if the experiences don’t take you to a new level.
- The Law of the Rubber Band. Be prepared to step out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself like a rubber band. Stretching yourself involves change, which is always potentially painful. Stretching also includes the taking of risk, a requirement for every good salesperson.
- The Law of Curiosity. You can’t grow if you don’t learn. Try to make “why” your favorite word. The more curious you are, the more you can learn, and the more you will grow. Don’t be afraid to exhibit a lack of knowledge. Always keep an open mind. Accept that any problem has numerous solutions.
Adapted from: The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, by John Maxwell. The John Maxwell Company is an international leadership-training organization.
