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"The more you do what you always did, the more you get what you always got." This wise and practical little aphorism has rescued me from disaster more than once in my life, because of its power to separate reality from denial. This statement is almost elegant in its simple affirmation of a powerful truth; there is a cause and effect relationship between our actions and our results. As long as you keep doing A, you can always (or only) expect to get B as a result. Now, as long as you are happy getting B as the result, everything is fine. However, if you would rather have another kind of result – C, perhaps, or maybe even D – the first thing you have to recognize is that you can’t get C or D by continuing to do A. You are going to have to start doing something different – you may even have to stretch yourself by learning a completely new strategy like W2 if you want to get a powerful result like D consistently.
So, what does any of this gobbledygook have to do with selling? A lot, actually, because in sales, we very often keep doing the same thing over and over again, whether we are satisfied with the results or not!
Well-known motivational speaker and life coach, Tony Robbins, points out that we all prefer to live our lives according to predictable, repeatable patterns. For better or worse, we really are creatures of habit. Our brains are designed to work by following and reinforcing certain patterns, and so we are most comfortable "doing what we always did." However, while these patterns may feel normal, they very often don’t get us what we really want, but when that happens, do we face the facts and admit that we need to change our pattern and stop doing what we always did? No, we most likely blame someone or something else for our failure or disappointment.
There are certainly plenty of blame targets out there. Right now, it is easy to blame the economy; we tell ourselves nobody is buying. In better economic times, we can blame the competition; there are just too many good options out there for us to compete. Or, we can blame our own product; it just doesn’t have the cool new features customers are looking for these days. Maybe we might even blame our sales manager for not giving us a good territory or setting our quota to high and not giving us enough leads. Then of course, there is the one person we love to blame the most – the customer, who is too stingy, too dumb, too obtuse, too hard to get along with, too whatever we can think of at the moment that might explain why he doesn’t want to do business with us.
Instead, could it be that we are still doing what we always did, still getting the results that we always got, and just don’t want to face the fact that things won’t change until we do?
I am very sympathetic to the struggles faced by those who earn their livelihood in sales, because I have been in sales all of my life. I know some days the stress can be brutal. Even when you have a great month or a great quarter or even a great year, there can always be that little bit of anxiety at the back of your mind about what will happen tomorrow. I heard a fellow say once that being in sales is like waking up unemployed every day. Maybe it’s not that bad, but it can certainly be challenging, especially if you keep doing what you always did, getting what you always got, grumbling about the result, but never do anything about it!
So, what is the answer? For me, the only solution is to be constantly evolving. If you have a set, comfortable pattern that you follow every day (you might call it your "system"), and it is not producing the results you want, did it ever occur to you that your system is broken? Maybe it worked in 1995 or 2000 or 2005, but that doesn’t mean it will work today. Are you staying up on the latest trends in your market? Are you taking full advantage of the innovations that have happened in sales in just the past two years with the advent of the Internet phenomenon, Sales 2.0? Are you focused too much on what you want and not enough on what your customers really need or want? Do you know what is the next big thing (and the thing after that) that is coming up in your industry? Do you know how to educate yourself to sell it and educate your customers to buy it?
You have to keep learning; you have to keep growing, you have to keep training; you have to keep adapting. The Wishbone offense was THE thing in college football for a few years, but defenses caught up and offenses had to adapt. Today, the current big offense is the spread offense, but defenses will adapt and football will change again. You can’t keep doing what you always did and expect to keep wining. To press the football analogy a little farther, every year pro football teams go through a grueling regimen of training in July and August to get ready for the coming season. However, once the season starts, they don’t quit training and just play games; they still practice at least four days a week. By the time the Super Bowl is over, the two teams that play in that game have practiced more than any other team in the league, and they have plays in their play book that didn’t exist at the start of the season.
In sales, just like any other part of life, if you are not growing, you are dying. If you are truly content to keep getting just what you are getting today, then ignore everything I have said here. But, if you aren’t, then decide right now what it is that you– YOU– need to change about the way you do things, that immediately can give you the possibility of a better result. I bet you already know what it is; you have just been putting it off as being too much work or too expensive. Just ask yourself this question, "Would you rather do what it takes to make the change now, or would you prefer to still be getting what you always got five years from now?"
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