If you are leading a sales organization or if you are a professional salesperson understanding that there is a price to be paid to achieve success must be clearly understood and accepted.

Earn Your Success

A good friend of mine always told me that you “earned success” and you had to accept the fact that their normally was price to pay for that success. When I work with my client’s sales teams I always inquire about their goals, actions and commitments to achieving their objectives-and what doesn’t surprises me anymore is this lack of fully understanding of the “price to pay”.

I am not suggesting that our lives are so consumed with achieving success that all other facets of life are out of balance. Those of you who have taken my “Personal & Professional Pizza” assessment understand my focus on life balance, if you haven’t take the assessment, view my Gourmet Life video: http://www.acumenmgmt.com/KeninAction123

However, if you are leading a sales organization or if you are a professional salesperson understanding that there is a price to be paid to achieve success must be clearly understood and accepted. I see salespeople showing up Monday and simply coming to work-sales leadership and sales roles demand more.

First; it’s creative time. Taking time on a quiet evening or on a Saturday to review each active sales opportunity and thinking through your sales tactics/strategies demands extra time. What else can you do to win?

Second; it’s professional. Are you actively taking the extra time to review LinkedIn groups within your market to better understand what issues are being discussed? The Sales Association group in LinkedIn and their VP Sales Group are good groups to join. I am actually leading a series of monthly sales leadership web casts for the VP Sales Group.

Third; it’s your network. Paying the price to develop, nurture and expand your network pays results. This takes time to find the right individuals and your effort to create an active campaign to build the network. As a professional this time will bring you additional levels of revenue-at unexpected times.

Fourth; it’s mental toughness. Just last week a salesperson was 90% confident he was closing an opportunity and then he got hit with an objection and was flattened. He wasn’t strong enough to counter sell the objection, but at least he was strong enough to ask his fellow sales team members for advice. We will now see if he and his manager go in to win.

I always enjoy the comments everyone makes on my various blogs, but reading your thoughts on this blog would be important. What are the actions or efforts you believe are necessary to achieve success?

Acumen Management Group Ltd. “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory, and platform services have illuminated, motivated, and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. His latest book is: “Recruiting High Performance Sales Teams’.