Sales Coaching: You Are Responsible

No one but you is responsible for your actions. But are you taking responsibility for what happens to you? You decide the actions you will or won't take. You make your own decisions. And the things that happens to you are a direct result of those actions or inactions and decisions. Placing blame, making excuses, and denying the facts hurts you and keeps you from the sales success you want. Yet, you may find that the people who are supposed to support you just make things more difficult, and they don't do what they say they will. When you know this to be true it just means that you have to take on the responsibility and take action to get it done.

Getting angry is a waste of energy and it puts your focus on the wrong things. Your focus needs to be on getting whatever you need to do to succeed done in spite of anyone and everything else. Take control and develop a plan to work around incompetent people and systems.

But you had no idea the potential prospect would react that way. Really, if it's the first time that's perfectly ok. You just had a great learning experience. Take the time to think about what went well and where things started to turn south. Knowing what you know now what will you do to prepare to handle this in a better way next time?

How many times does it take for you to figure out that if you keep doing the same things you can expect to get the same results? If you keep doing what you're doing and you continue to get more bad results than good results that's a pretty good sign that you need to do things differently. No matter what your sales manager may be telling you. When what you're doing produces poor results you need to learn to never do that in the same way again. Instead you must find a better way of getting the results you want.

You're probably doing what you're doing because someone else told you to do it. They may have even told you that it works for everyone else. You'll be told to do a lot of things that supposedly worked for someone else, but if it isn't working for you it doesn't matter how many other people it does work for. You have to find the things that do work for you and then do those things.

You have to succeed in sales based on your own values, behaviors, and attitudes. If something doesn't feel right to you remember that's just your little inner voice telling you that you shouldn't be doing this. Listen. Not listening just gets you in trouble.

When you understand what motivates you it's much easier to take action. You alone are responsible for finding a way to succeed in sales that's right for you. You are the only one who can take the actions you know you need to take. Only you can hold yourself accountable for your actions. Motivation is what causes you to either take actions or to avoid taking actions. When you know what motivates you it's almost impossible for you not to take action.