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Increase Sales Simply By Raising Your Own Bar

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: One of my favorite quotes is To go where you have never been before demands that you do what you have never done before. In sales, this is very true because highly productive and successful sales professionals are always pushing the envelope or the bar to reach beyond their comfort zones to achieve their continuous goal to increase sales.

Increase Sales Simply By Raising Your Own Bar

One of my favorite quotes is "To go where you have never been before demands that you do what you have never done before." In sales, this is very true because highly productive and successful sales professionals are always pushing the envelope or the bar to reach beyond their comfort zones to achieve their continuous goal to increase sales.

These sales professionals are very much like athletes who continually raise the bar of performance excellence. Over the years, for example, the high jump record went from 1895 at 6’5-1/2” to 8’1-/2” in 1993. Each time the existing record was broken, the bar was raised and a new technique had to be discovered and honed.

So this leads to two obvious questions:

1. How high do you wish to raise your Increase Sales Bar?
2. What is keeping you from taking such actions?

Until you answer the second question, you will not be able to answer the first one. For it is the known and unknown obstacles in life that prevent each of us from raising our own personal and professional bars. During the last several weeks, I have been experiencing and working through an unknown bar of a physical limitation. Having somehow injured my right arm, my productivity has greatly diminished. So now I am working through that unknown obstacle by the rescheduling of my activities to changing my office environment by using my laptop and a comfy chair to allow me to rest this sore arm.

What has kept me focused is still tracking my daily activities and maintaining a positive belief that this too shall pass. Yes, I am uncomfortable, sometimes extremely so but there are many individuals who deal with far greater physical limitations than my sore arm.

Now to the first question about how high do you wish to raise your Increase Sale Bar. To answer this question suggests that you must know your sales numbers and general marketplace information including:

Market trends
Sales cycle time
Your hours worked
Your compensation
Sales conversion rate
Overall customer value
Customer acquisition cost
Average sales transaction value
Current problems and issues faced by your customers

Now with this data, you can begin to construct a new approach (sales action plan) so that when you raise the Increase Sales Bar you will successfully fly over that new level of achievement. Beyond having the plan, you will also need to change your Beliefs. If you believe that the economy sucks, that no one is buying and why make any effort, then you will reap exactly those beliefs. Sales Coaching Tip: Remember the words of the past such as You will reap what you sow. In today’s speak, this mean you will receive what you believe (think).

For it is those Beliefs, thoughts that are driving your Actions creating your Results.

B = Beliefs
A = Actions
R = Results

If you leave the Increase Sales Bar at its present level, then you are Okay with the status quo. However, if you want to increase sales, then you must move the BAR higher so that you truly need to stretch yourself physically, emotionally and mentally. What that means for you as a sales professional only you can answer that question.

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Article Tags: belief that, comfy chair, continuous goal, conversion rate, cycle time, favorite quotes, high jump record, market trends, obstacle, obstacles in life, office environment, performance excellence, physical limitations, pushing the envelope, rescheduling, right arm, sales numbers, sales professionals, sore arm, successful sales



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