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Your best year ever is a mission, not a goal
By Jeffrey Gitomer
Contributing Writer
I am challenging you to have your best year ever by beating your goals and achieving your own expectation of excellence. So far, I’ve given you the first 12 elements of how to have your best year ever:
1. Define yourself.
2. Develop a sales mission statement.
3. Have a deep belief in the three critical areas of selling.
4. Develop greater pride in your accomplishments.
5. You are what you eat.
6. Get rid of one time-waster.
7. Read a book every two months.
8. Get your (sales) pipeline full.
9. Get your monthly sales quota met by the second week of the month.
10. Start branding yourself.
11. Get up earlier.
12. Begin capturing your thoughts and ideas in writing.
How are you doing so far?
Here are a few more of the elements.
Give one speech. Most people are afraid of speaking in public. The reason is simple: fear of looking foolish. The basis for this fear is lack of skill and lack of preparedness.
Many people are afraid to give a speech because they fear someone will ask a question that they cannot answer and will be made to look foolish.
If you want to have your best year ever, join Toastmasters, become a certified Toastmaster (which means give 10 speeches to your club members), and then get yourself booked at a Rotary Club or Kiwanis Club and give a 15-minute speech.
The self-confidence you will gain cannot be measured, but it can be felt in pride of your accomplishment, in self-assurance and in the sense of overcoming a personal fear.
And if you give the speech to the right group, it will be felt in the thickening of your own wallet from the leads and sales.
Write one article. After you have spent a few months writing things down, I challenge you to write one article that will appear in a magazine or newsletter that your prospective customers or your existing customers might read.
When you appear in print, it changes your customers’ entire perception of you. You go from salesperson to industry expert; you go from community member to community leader.
I don’t write books; I write articles. Articles lead to books. My next book is The Little Red Book of Sales Answers.
Once you start to write, the opportunities are limitless.
Make sales at breakfast. Instead of trying to get to work “on time,” make a $5 appointment and buy a customer or prospective customer breakfast.
Make money while other people are stuck in traffic. I start my day so early that my mantra for the past 15 years has been, “I make money while other people are sleeping.”
And, if you want to have your best year ever, your work day must start earlier than it currently does.
Breakfast is the easiest and most productive time to make a sales call and build a relationship.
Keep your present customers loyal to you and your company. In order to grow your business organically (the best, strongest and most economical way), you must first preserve the customers
you have.
You do this with on-time delivery, excellent service and giving value and superior communication (not with lowest price). This will breed referrals and testimonials, two key ingredients for having your best year ever.
Now you have 16 of the elements. Return next time for the final part of how to have your best year ever.
Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling, is the president of Charlotte-based Buy Gitomer. E-mail him at salesman@gitomer.com.
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