10 Steps to Make 2009 Your Most Successful Year Ever

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan
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Sales Leadership Challenges to Having a World Class Sales Force - By Dave Kurlan

It's the first week of January and you have goals, a plan, some anxiety over the economy and good intentions. As you go about your work this week, what will you do that will not only make 2009 better than 2008, but make 2009 your best year ever?

Are there areas in which you need to improve? If so, identify each of them and be specific about how you will accomplish it.

Do you need to be more resilient in how you handle resistance, stalls and objections? There will be more of that in 2009 so if that's an Achilles heel for you, determine what you must do differently in order to do that.

Do you need more opportunities in your pipeline? How many? How will you get yourself in front of more prospects?

Do you need to be more effective qualifying? How exactly? How will you accomplish that?

Do you need to ask more and better questions? Which questions should you be asking and when you should be asking them? How will you develop the discipline to ask instead of talk?

Do you need to improve your closing percentage? What's causing your unacceptable percentage today and what will you do to change that?

Are there things that you should be doing that you are not comfortable doing today? What are they? Make sure you identify all of them - even the most subtle.

If I can give you just five tips that will make 2009 your best year ever it would be these:

1) Do not attempt to become more comfortable with the concept you struggle with.
2) Do not wait until you are more comfortable before you execute.
3) Do not modify the strategy or tactic until it is comfortable for you.
4) Just do what you are not comfortable doing, exactly as you have been told, and you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams!
5) Employ a no exceptions rule whereby you will make no exceptions as to when you will do what is uncomfortable for you. In 2009 you will do it always.
6) Make no excuses. If you weren't effective enough, take ownership, identify what you must do more effectively next time and just do it.
7) Don't Think. Over analyzing, over complicating and especially, over thinking will kill you. Stop thinking and just do it.
8) Stay away from options, logic, data and statistics to sell your product or service. Options will prevent people from making decisions while logic, data and statistics move people from emotional to analytical, thereby removing the desire to buy.
9) Reread Baseline Selling and apply any sections that you didn't think applied to you. It applied but you were rationalizing (uncomfortable). Just do it.
10) Attend my February Recession Busting Boot Camp. Nothing will get you into better selling shape than those two days with me. Nothing. Imagine yourself on the phone, in the field, in front of prospects and customers and having your way with them - nothing can stop you. That's how you'll be performing when I'm done with you!

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Free PDF Download
Sales Leadership Challenges to Having a World Class Sales Force - By Dave Kurlan

About the Author: Dave Kurlan

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Dave Kurlan is a best-selling author, top-rated speaker and thought leader on sales development. He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling (Dan Seidman), Stepping Stones (Deepak Chopra and Brian Tracey) and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2 (David Riklan).
Click here to visit Dave's website.

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