Today I’m pleased to feature a guest post from Chris Conrey.
Chris Conrey is a professional salesman with a passion for technology. Between client calls you’ll find him writing, reading, or thinking about sales and technology. Read more from Chris on his blog, Conrey is for Closers.
You’ve been successful in sales before, why change?
It’s a New Year and you’re probably at least into quitting your New Years Resolution by now. Maybe you were trying to lose weight, or quit smoking, or whichever vice is yours. But you were doing fine being chubby or smokey, so why change? Why do you think everyone has these resolutions year after year after year? They’re hard to stick to. Its hard to make big changes. But wait a second, this isn’t about you getting healthier – or is it?
Did you make sales resolutions? No? Why not?
“But I did great last year Conrey!” you are shouting at your monitor right now. “I hit my budgets, closed more deals, and generally was glad that 2010 wasn’t 2009 anymore.”
Sure, but you want to get healthier in your physical life, why not in your sales life too? Holding steady is going backwards if the competition is improving – And you know that your competition is going to be getting better (at least those who read this blog post). So what do you do?
Here are a couple of quick things to do to get better at what you do and be more successful:
- Read: Read anything, sales related or not. Read sales books (or reread classics), read sales blogs, read blogs and articles related to your industry. Read things that challenge you to think. A salesman’s best asset is his brain and quick thinking skills – train these like you would your muscles if you were at the gym.
- Train: Go to a training seminar, or sales conference, or training class. Refresh those skills you’ve not used in a while. Heck maybe you’ll learn something new even!
- Converse: Join a local group that talks sales stuff. Being around other salesfolks can only help if you find people that will speak openly and in the interest of mutual growth. Geeks do this with user groups centered on their technology of choice, why can’t we?
Go out and try these things slowly. When you work out you don’t run a marathon the first day. Take a few small steps, run a little bit at a time. Eventually you’ll look back on your slow pace and remember those first steps to getting to where you are now.
