Five Questions to Ask Yourself Looking Ahead to 2013

Welcome to, as Readers Digest has proclaimed it to be, “The Year of Optimism.” This should not be new to you if you are in sales. For us, every year, every month, week, day and minute are filled with optimism. It’s the rest of the world that is just catching up to us!

Before you leave to make your first sales call of the new year, allow me to give you five things to think about in the form of questions:

1. Do I have a plan?
2. Am I organized?
3. What will I do differently this year?
4. Where do I want to be one year from today?
5. Am I optimistic?

Answering these questions is far more fun than the five I gave you in last week’s blog. Hindsight may be 20-20, but if you spend your time looking back your bound to walk into something hard and abrasive. So let’s look ahead...

• Do you have a plan?
You’ve had several quiet, non-selling days to sit and think over a plan for succeeding in 2013. Which of your existing accounts have more business in them? Where will you look to find hot leads to call on? What are the exact, specific sales activities you will follow?

• Are you organized?
There’s a reason why they call the New Year, “New” and not, “Same Old, Same Old.” Your desk should be clean. Your shoes should be polished. All of the pencils on your desk should be sharpened. Starting the year from a base of organization is your best first step. Take it.

• What will you do differently this year?
As my friend Kelly Mallozzi likes to say, “If you keep doing what you are doing, you will keep getting what you are getting.” Hey, I think it’s great that you had a good year last year, but you are far from perfect. There’s got to be something you can improve upon.

• Where do you want to be in a year?
I love this question. Use it to visualize your endpoint and feel free to answer it not just from a sales standpoint, but for every aspect of your life. As the late Stephen Covey would say, “Begin with the end in mind.”

• Are you optimistic?
What if I told you that I was from the future and that I knew with 100 percent certainty that 2013 was going to be your best year ever? If you knew, with that same 100 percent certainty, that this was true, you would be sales-confident and that attitude would permeate every aspect of your job. Well guess what? I am from the future and...

Now get out there and prove me right!

What’s your sales challenge? Bills training programs will drive your sales momentum. Check them out at www.Aspirefor.com or call Bill at 781-934-7036