Habits are the things that separate successful people from unsuccessful people. Sales managers all over the world have beaten to death Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as a way to ensure your pipeline is filled, and you’re progressing deals through the sales cycle.KPIs is corporate slang for successful habits. Forget about the corporate jargon for a moment, and focus on habits in your daily life that can lead to your personal success whatever you define that as.
A habit is a consistent action that becomes so ingrained in our daily lives that it becomes almost automatic. Like brushing your teeth or reading at the end of the day. You may have heard that it takes 21 days of consistency to create a habit, that myth has been debunked by the National Health Services. Many argue that a habit is formed out of motivation, for example you went on a bender one weekend and the hangover was so bad that you decided to become sober. Others will state that the habit creates motivation, for example going to the gym consistently builds momentum and soon you cannot live without your daily dose of gym time. Habits are not an exact science.
There are habits that are good for you and bad for you. Going to the gym everyday, health is arguably the most important thing, as referenced above. The habit of excessive drinking after work everyday, is arguably a bad habit. Habits can be judged on their good or bad value based on the consequences they create. Creating good habits are subjective, however there are habits that highly successful salespeople use that are transferable.
A habit that the best salespeople use is being proactive.
They are not waiting for the deal to progress itself, the proactive sales rep will challenge their prospect with new insights and concepts, will ask key questions to help push a deal and will actively pursue prospects to create opportunities and fill their pipeline. Adapting that habit to your daily life, a proactive person will achieve their goals at a faster rate. Application of creativity will allow you to take charge of things that are important to you.
A habit that many successful people utilize is working backwards, having the end in mind.
For example, if you are managing a complex deal that requires multiple department approval, legal approval, as well as having an onboarding time, it’s imperative to take that into account when mapping to the prospects “go live” date. Successful salespeople will state something of the sort like “if your goal is to be live by October 15th, then we will need approval from these departments by this date, legal red lines completed by that date, and a PO returned to us for processing by this date.” In this sense you have the end in mind for your deal and are essentially project managing your deal.
Pay yourself first.
A news article was released a few weeks ago stating that the majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.The majority of Americans don’t have an emergency fund of 6 months saved up in case things go haywire. While everyone’s situation is different, there is an easy way to start overcoming this problem, pay yourself first. The habit of putting first things first is a key driver for successful people. We all want the shiny item, or to party with our friends, but not putting first things first will only leave those problems lying underneath. Paying yourself first is directly related to putting first things first as an easy example, such as when your paycheck comes in, taking x% of it and placing it into a savings account that you don’t touch. I take $100 a day and auto transfer to multiple accounts. 33% goes to a HYSA that nets me 4.15% interest. The other two thirds are transferred to separate investment vehicles. I have to manage whatever is left at the end of the month and put first things first for my personal goals.
Successful sales people use the three above habits to drive sales success by asking the key questions to their prospects and accounts to help move deals along through the sales cycle, track their deals meticulously with the end in mind so that things are progressing accordingly and their quotas will be blown out of the water, and putting first things first by doing the prospecting and admin work in the back end ahead of time so that they are prepared when conducting their presentation(s) with their prospects. These habits take time to develop, but if done consistently will be second nature to you and will drive your success.
TLDR:
Successful sales reps and people have positive habits. Keeping the end in mind, while enjoying the ride will help give you a soft landing should s*** hit the fan and make sure you’re making memories along the way.
