What would you say if I told you that you had a weapon in your arsenal that single handedly, could drastically change your activities and sales results, but, because you didn’t know how it worked, you ignored, misused, and forgot about it (and sold less and made less money than you should)? I’ll bet you your next commission check that you are not fully utilizing what I am talking about despite that it is one of THE most powerful forces available to all sales people. Yes…I said ALL sales people — you included. NO ONE is exempt. Here are some clues: 1. During the course of 1 selling day, you’ll do it over 5,000 times. 2. Your sales results are ALWAYS equal to how well you do this. 3. You were never taught this skill in school or in any sales training. 4. By itself, this tool can drastically change your results. 5. ALL top sales producers do this RIGHT. 6. You have an infinite supply of it, so you take it for granted. 7. You’ll tell yourself you already know how to do it. Guesses? The popular answers I hear when I am speaking to sales teams are attitude, words, or thoughts, which are good answers, but not the right answer. You ready? The forgotten ‘X’ factor is…… your ability to choose every action you take. FACT: top achieving sales people make the RIGHT choices more often than mediocre players. FACT: every action is a choice and every time you don’t action, it’s a choice. BOTTOM LINE: Your sales results and life is a sum of the choices you make and how you choose to respond to what happens to you. I know what you’re thinking — “Yeah. That’s great Mark. But I know that.” Good. Then do you know how you are making the choices you are making? Do you know why you are making the choices you do? If you said, “absolutely yes” to both of those questions then you are excused. If not, read on my friend because this is HOW EVERY one of your results are created. But, here’s the favorite question I challenge sales teams I train with: If you know that everything hinges on choice, then I imagine you want to make more decisions that drive higher sales, a larger bank account, and accelerates your personal growth, right? Good. Read on. Let’s look at some of the choices that I’ve seen create the difference between an ‘A’ player and a ‘B’ player, and then I am going to reveal to you 4 tips you can begin doing right now to harness this amazingly powerful tool you already have (that you’ve forgotten about). Choices you make as a sales person: 1. What time you start your day. 2. How much time you INVEST in getting better at your craft (like reading this article!) 3. How effectively you communicate (words spoken, how effective you listen, body language etc.) These ALL are choices. 4. How you spend every selling minute available. (Administrative tasks vs selling tasks) 5. How you set your priorities (many sales people, unknowingly, fall victim of self-made priorities based on fear) 6. How you organize yourself and your day. 7. How long of a lunch break to take. 8. How long you talk to people in the office about the weather. Get it? The list could go on forever…..because everything comes down to choice. EVERYTHING! You either make a choice in a proactive position to do something, and NOT do something else, or you choose in how you react to an event that happens to you. Period. BONUS P.S. On of the biggest areas I see sales people I coach get tripped up on is how they view ‘activity vs accomplishment’ in a day. You either are active (busy work that doesn’t increase sales) or you accomplish (getting results that drive sales), and that is really determined by the priorities you set AND execute on. Many sales people feel handcuffed by priorities, but the truth is, priorities are set by you. You create your priorities based on what you LIKE to do and what you personally value. We just tell ourselves, “I had to…..” or, “I couldn’t because…..” You didn’t HAVE to do anything. You chose to take the action you took. Bottom line? Every activity, behavior, minute spent, word spoken, word written, and everything else is a choice, and the people at the top, make the BEST choices in the action they take and how they react to what happens to them. Here’s what really gets my juices going and why the majority of what I show sales people has NOTHING to do with special techniques or strategies: because that’s NOT the most important part of a sales pro’s arsenal. THE most powerful gift you could ever give yourself is the skill of learning how to build and use the drivers that dictate if you win or lose the internal game, because the main ingredient in winning in sales, is first, winning the internal battle. (p.s. drop me an email titled “WHITE PAPER” to: mark@betteryourbestnow.com and I’ll send you my Special White Paper Report FREE titled: Why Traditional Sales Training Is Over-Rated, Over-Taught, and Over-Used and Keeping Sales People From Making More Sales and BIG Money.” NO obligation. NO committment) I’ve tried to show sales people all the fancy strategies, but guess what, if they don’t have the right internal skills (one of them is learning how to make the best choices that support what they want) it doesn’t matter. BUT, watch out when a sales pro has mastered the drivers of their behavior and then learned successful ways to execute their sales plan. That’s a GUARANTEED recipe for the highest achievement. There are many factors that affect a sales person’s action during the course of a day, but for the sake of giving you more helpful information so you can get better quicker, here are 4 tips to jump start your decision making skills: 1. Ask yourself if the activity you are currently doing is TRULY the most important behavior that will help your business at that very moment (be careful, your mind will justify why you aren’t making the prospecting calls). 2. Know when negative emotions are pulling your choices to more non-threatening activities (IE: if an event creates disappointment, understand that yourself protection mechanisms will probably try and move you to actions that are safer until you are feeling “better.” This is the same reason why it’s so easy to make hard calls when you are kicking butt and taking names. Don’t let your emotions dictate your behavior). 3. Understand where your strongest skill set is. Why is this important? Because you gravitate towards what you are good at. So, this is a MAJOR problem for sales people who are good at gathering information (time killer if overkill), taking care of details (another time killer if not necessary), or gifted in any area that doesn’t directly grow sales. Another MAJOR problem with this is since they are good at it they think it is a good use of their time! 4. Identify what you are afraid of. One of the most common traps I identify when working with sales teams is that since sales people aren’t supposed to be afraid of prospecting they say they aren’t, but remember — ACTIONS ALWAYS SPEAK THE LOUDEST. How you are spending your time tells me everything I need to know. Be honest with yourself. Just because you admit a fear doesn’t mean you won’t take action. The opposite will actually occur. When you admit it, you will find yourself overcoming it more often because your mind won’t try to justify excuses. Be aware, or you better BEWARE.