Three Attitude Shifts To Kick off Your “New Year” (Sales Series, Part 1)

Do you feel it?

For many of us, Labor Day signals new beginnings, a fresh start. The long hot summer ends, the season brings cooler weather, school begins again, and we steer toward 4th QTR: Fall is a time of renewal, and it’s the perfect wave to ride, to help reset your thinking.

In this new series on sales, we want to shift your perspective, from reactionary and cautious, to recognizing the new opportunities opening before you every day by creating an action plan for sales that will amp your team and jump-start growth. We will also look at opportunities that might exist within our clients that we’ve yet to uncover, plus, potential within our teams that we can help bring forth.

But first, to start your “new year” off right, there are three attitudes that are holding us back in this new era of extreme caution, attitudes we need to abandon so that we can take advantage of this season of new beginnings -yes, even during COVID- for yourself and your team. Here are three attitude adjustments that might help you and your team refocus and refuel for a fresh start:

I) The Market is Now Moving: Are You Still Standing Still?

COVID sent many of us into an initial spiral of doubt and fear. Sales plummeted and many of us lost our way.

Through Spring and Summer, we were stunned into a daze of confusion about what to do next. The trauma was so intense, it affected our decision making in virtually every area of our lives, personally and professionally, namely, by setting our world on pause. It was a helpless feeling, and we rode it out through watching and waiting, with almost entirely reactionary measures. 

But this adoption of a conservative, reactionary attitude pushed aside decades of best practice planning, strategic thinking, and proactive sales energy. Even the strongest among us yielded to the temptation to pause the most basic of proven sales practices. Yes, we pivoted to PPE, kits shipped to homes, and many other positive aspects because our industry is profoundly adept at reacting to a crisis, but most proactive sales and marketing tactics were abandoned. 

COVID is here to stay for some time, but now, it seems the market -our clients- are no longer in wait-and-see mode, the market is no longer merely settling, it is moving. 

At commonsku, we’re able to gauge the market’s health due to our large sampling of the industry as a whole. Our community of $875M reveals a small surge in project demand now that extends beyond PPE. The projects are more varied, getting bigger, and they are increasing.

And if the market is signaling a shift, then we should shift our thinking out of neutral and into high gear. We can’t erase the past several months, but we sure as hell cannot let it define us moving forward, and the only way to do that is to stop letting recent past experience dictate our choices moving forward as a business. You serve a unique market with unique demands, and you can’t afford to listen to the crowd or the industry (the law of averages). You must heed your unique clients’ voice and stop listening to the headlines or the stock market for your cues about what to do next. The answers to your future sales growth are not in the media but deep within your clients’ needs.

Attitude Shift #1: I won’t allow industry opinion, public opinion, or fear dictate how we listen to and serve our clients. Today, I choose to ignore the voices of doom and listen to what my clients need instead.

II) A Wrong Sales Plan is the Boldest Type of Sales Plan 

Sales planning should never cease, it should only adapt. 

Why is a wrong sales plan better than no sales plan? For one, at least you’re planning. At least you’re thinking through what you can do to unlock sales and drive growth. A bad sales plan, quickly realized, can be amended and set on the right path, but many through this experience have chosen no sales plan at all.

Just because we can’t compare sales growth against previous activity doesn’t mean we should give up on sales planning and goal setting. Some distributors are setting goals by activity: sales calls, marketing tactics, reach-outs, video consults. Other distributors (rather than comparing against last year), are comparing against recent months, which is a much more realistic comparison. 

We’ll cover this in more detail in a future post in this series, but however you do it, the key is do something: planning and thinking always unlocks the next action and if it’s a wrong action, erase, reboot, and start over again. We’ve allowed COVID to sideline planning.

Some will still argue there’s no point, our clients aren’t doing anything, we can’t do events, we can only ship to homes, etc., etc., etc. … the excuses are endless, but the complainers are correct.

THEIR CLIENTS WON’T DO ANYTHING BECAUSE THEY’VE DECLARED IT SO.

By resigning, they forfeit their energies to only be reactive and not proactive. And clients, who are on the move now, won’t tolerate stagnation; they’ll find someone with better, bolder, bigger ideas, someone not stuck in “wait and see” mode.

Attitude Shift #2: I’ll not surrender to the excuse that no one’s buying, nor will I settle for the easy path that just waits for low-hanging fruit sales that may never come. Today, we’ll chart our own damn course, create a path where there is none, and make adjustments as we learn and grow.

III) Dig Deep Daily

We’re all fighting it: Call it malaise, “disinterested boredom,” exhaustion, or resignation, but we’ve all dealt with it in our own way through this season. Athletes call it “the wall,” and we’ve all hit it. 

We think we can’t go on any further, that we don’t have what it takes to dig within ourselves to take one more step. Marathoners discover it around mile 20 and know that it’s a wall that, with persistent, small steps, you can breakthrough.

Brené Brown in a recent podcast declared that we might possibly be entering “Act II” of a long story, and as anyone who watches a movie or reads a book knows, it’s the middle of a story that tends to drag. It’s the middle where we need our fortitude, this is where our own internal drive, our attitude about sales, life, and success, determine our fate. 

An example: Every year, there’s an ultra-marathon race that is 3,100 miles. 

Yes, a three-thousand-mile race. 

Each day, for 52 days, participants run the equivalent of two marathons. They consume between 7,000-10,000 calories per day, wear out 10-15 pairs of shoes, average five hours of sleep a night, and circle the same New York City block 5,649 times. 

62-year old William Sichel finished it in 2015. According to Coach Magazine, a UK publication, “The 62-year-old Sichel, who became the oldest man ever to finish, got through by breaking each day into manageable chunks. Sixteen laps before 8am. Forty laps by noon. Seventy by 5pm. Then pushing 120 by midnight when the race was called off for the night.”

Nirbhasa Magee, a former IT professional also finished the ultra. Outside Magazine interviewed Magee while he was running the race and he shared some profound insight we can all use to dig into the deepest part of ourselves: 

“On the one hand, you have to be very focused, determined, to keep always going forward. At the same time, you have to be very relaxed. So when I say focused and determined that doesn’t mean stressed out, it doesn’t mean being agitated. You have to be very calm, peaceful. If something comes your way, the ups, and the downs, the things you don’t expect, you can’t allow it to perturb you, to shake you. ”

Ask any endurance athlete and they will tell you that the secret to winning is to dig in, one step, one action at a time. And so it is with business. The founder of the 3,100-mile race, Sri Chinmoy, once wrote, “I do not compete with the rest of the world. I compete only with myself, for my progress is my true victory.”

Attitude Shift #3: Every day I have a choice: To adopt an attitude of next actions that will bring me closer to my goal, or to think that the race is too big to complete. Today, I choose to run.

At first, we were all (rightfully so) very cautious and genteel with our clients, our teams, and ourselves. With clients, we wanted to not come across as overtly selling in a sensitive environment. With our teams, we wanted to ensure they adjusted well to the new climate. 

But the seasons are shifting now and there’s no reason to remain stuck in a state of ambiguity, despair, or even uncertainty. 

The time for timidity is past us. We, as an industry, have solutions that we should boldly claim, solutions that inspire clients, motivate prospects, encourage employees, amplify brand experiences, and resolve problems. REAL solutions that drive sustainable results while spreading joy, comfort, delight, and amazement. Solutions that bring smiles to people’s faces or wake up a sleepy audience, products that bring wellness, joy, and meaning to life as well as advance the causes of any client. 

The secret strength of your power to grow in the next season resides in your attitude about what we sell, not in anything else.

Harita Davies is one of only eight women who have completed the 3100-mile race, she completed it last year. A New Zealand article summed up her accomplishment this way, “she may have been physically strong, but it was her mind that was going to get her through.” 

Or in Harita’s words: “Who knows what’s possible until you try it?” 

[Stay tuned for some practical ideas on how to plan your year, motivate your team, and move your market as we continue this new series on sales!]

Ps: What do the completers of the 3100-mile race receive? A t-shirt and a trophy. Think what you sell doesn’t matter? Ask Harita.