Sales is a profession where insanity seems to be the rule. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That is the credo of many sales professionals. They have a “system”. Unfortunately, it’s not a system that is designed to produce results. Too often this mentality is reinforced by a manager or company culture. New sales people are told to do it the way it’s always been done because that’s how “we do things”. That’s appropriate if everyone is happy with company and individual results, but that’s rarely the case. Great sales professionals constantly learn and try new things. They aren’t content to do what’s always been done. Doing the same thing will not change results. If you want to improve, look to change behavior.

This is a stumbling block for many sales professionals because they get comfortable where they are. A change might be productive but it also signifies a risk. Their fear of losing what they have outweighs the lure of what could be gained. There are two possible categories of doing the same thing. The first is negligence. Not doing something that should be done because of fears. If this is the case, change now. Doing nothing will always produce the worst results. The second category is activity. If a sales professional is doing something but not planning or executing well, then pieces of that behavior needs changed. To limit fear and risk of losing what results they currently have, change behavior piece by piece. Small changes won’t sink your entire process and this allows an evaluation period to see which changes produce better results.

Obviously, changing everything you do isn’t advisable. This is a slow process. Start by finding a behavior that couldn’t be hurt too much by a change. In other words, identify what you’re worst at and do something different. If results are bad, how much worse can they get? Try something new. Are you bad at networking events? Go to different ones, work on how you approach attendees, or modify what you talk about. The options of change are abundant, pick one and try something new. Do you get better results? Then keep doing it. Do you get the same or worse results? Then another change is required- you haven’t identified a bad behavior. Through this process of change and evaluation, salespeople provide themselves with a custom template that works for them. Break out of the insanity, make changes to your behavior and evolve a sales process that gets results.

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