Here are questions that will help you learn how you may be holding yourself back:
- What have you accomplished? Think about the past year. Write down all your achievements. If you sold a particularly difficult prospect, write it down. If you met or exceeded your sales goals, give yourself credit. Don’t wait for customers or you sales manager to notice how good you are. Do it yourself. This exercise will make you realize how successful you’ve been. Your accomplishments are a reminder that you create your own success.
- What were your biggest disappointments? Write down your disappointments from the past year, everything from the times that you failed yourself or were disappointed by prospects or customers. Realize that these disappointments are in the past, and the best way to deal with them is to learn from them. While it may be too late to do anything about past failures, it’s not too late to do something about future success.
- What have you learned? Look at your accomplishments. What did you do that worked? Then look at your disappointments. What could you have done differently? Did you learn any lessons from your failures?
- How do you face problems? What do you do when a long-term customer switches to the competition? How do you handle customer complaints? Changing just a few behaviors can radically improve your chances of success.
- How do you limit yourself and how can you break these invisible chains? Write down the ways that you limit yourself, such as: “I don’t prospect enough,” “I let gatekeepers keep me from seeing key prospects,” or “I give up too easily when a prospect raises objections.”
Self-imposed limits
Whatever your answers, look at them and ask yourself what self-imposed limits have cost you. Many of them will correspond to sales you failed to close, showing the connection between your actions and your results.
Once you’ve identified your limits, decide whether you’re willing to overcome them. Try to switch a limiting factor into a more empowering one. Write down the specific areas in which you’re not achieving your goals. Then come up with a written set of objectives that will turn limiting factors into positive goals.
Set 10 goals
Set 10 goals to work on immediately. Focusing on the top 10 will concentrate your power like a laser. Make sure meeting these goals is possible. If you can’t figure out how to reach a goal, you may have to switch it for another. Your chosen goals should be in areas you have identified as weaknesses.
Adapted from Power Questions, by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas. Sobel is an expert on client development. Panas is an executive partner of Panas, Linzy & Partners, one of the world’s most highly regarded firms in financial resources development.
