For goodness’ sakes go on and celebrate if your end of financial year numbers stacked up! You deserve it. For those of you that fell short, well, there’s always next year. Be sure to integrate plenty of key lessons and insights into your approach this coming year.
If you missed your annual sales target, all is not lost. Are you still improving? You must have a clearer and more refined process. Are you more skilled, efficient and confident? One thing is for certain, you’re 12 months more experienced. There are always positives to take away.
What about Mr Sales Manager? I’m sure he’s rubbing his sweaty palms together with the release of new annual targets. Surprise, surprise, they are higher than last year. Funny that. What’s fascinating is you haven’t been allocated additional resources or time? Once again you’re asked to achieve more with less. This is a real challenge, so you better be up for it!
You achieve more with less by being more efficient and eliminating as much time wasting as possible. This will mean tweaking your strategy slightly, or in some cases radically. It will mean collaborating and sharing insights and tactics with other team members. And it will most certainly mean getting very comfortable with saying no.
Last year posed many challenges for sales professionals. Competition continued to intensify across industries. Business is getting faster and less personal. Customers are demanding more for less. Our world is spinning faster than ever! That won’t change. So you will need to continue to adapt and refine your approach, and be fresh in mind and strong in spirit.
Regardless of where you finished on the leader board last financial year, it’s now vital to take some time to reflect and be thankful for what you have achieved. Don’t get too caught up in your successes or failures as both are transient. This is a new year, a year to keep learning and keep growing. Enjoy!
Trent Leyshan is the founder and CEO of BOOM Sales! a leading sales training and sales development specialist. He is also the creator of The NAKED Salesman, BOOMOLOGY! RetroService, and the Empathy Selling Process.
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