In sports, you know you’ve “made it” when your team makes the playoffs or wins the championship. Perhaps an individual athlete wins an MVP award or does well in a big competition, or maybe makes an all-star game. All of these are obvious public acknowledgments and celebration of success and achievement. Frequently, we hear professional athletes say “nobody can take this away from me.”
But what about in business, and, specifically, sales?
We don’t have such public and indisputable declarations of success. There’s no Super Bowl, no all-star game, no MVP award. Our achievements are less sudden and more gradual. They’re less public, less definitive, quieter.
So what is “making it” in business and in sales? What does it look like?
This is obviously an opinion question, and yours might look different than mine, but I’d suggest you get clear on it because it’s pretty much the goal. It’s what we’re working for.
For me, more than anything, “making it” means having a strong and consistent flow of opportunities and prospects. It means having events on the calendar that we know will lead to business. For me, these are speeches, prospect phone calls, sales meetings, and proposal reviews.
What are your calendar indicators of success? How do you put more of them on the calendar quickly?
For me, “making it” means having happy customers, many of whom are also friends. We’d be happy to drink and eat together, and get our families together. You have customers like this.
And here’s the key to our version of making it: because it’s so gradual and quiet and unremarkable (and, often undefined), quite often we don’t know that we’ve already made it! You’re there, but you’re still thinking and working like you’re not.
So assess what success means to you, and then take an honest look at whether you’ve already arrived there. If so, behave accordingly (boldly, confidently). If not, what do you need to do to get there? Break it down into daily actions, and execute.
Because once you make it in this business, nobody can take that away from you.
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