I just got home after visiting with one of our dealer groups. Wow, what enthusiasm and excitement their salespeople and managers have, and it shows in their results.

These guys are not only holding their own as business moves back to normal, they had their very best year ever in 2011. You have to love pure ambition, especially when it’s combined with so much enthusiasm and the great skills they’ve worked so hard to develop.

It’s all about YOU!

I’ve been there, done that, as the salesperson who didn’t get enough training and got stuck in the 6-8-10 car rut, where I learned that it wasn’t my fault. How did I learn that?

Easy, I had the negative help from the huddle and even the negative things our managers said out loud about us being in a tough market, with a tough product to sell in tough times. Plus we spent more time at work explaining why we couldn’t sell than we spent in learning how to sell or doing what it takes to sell.

If you’re living your life in sales in that last paragraph – you’ll either pinch yourself and wake up, or you’ll keep the poor-me blame-game going about how life is so tough for you in sales. But…

• Can you sell more if you just came to work and worked all day? Yes

• Can you sell more if you give more people demos? Yes

• Can you sell more if you learn to handle price and close the sale? Yes

• Can you follow up and sell more? Yes

• Can you prospect and sell more? Yes

• Can you do a better job on phone and Internet leads and sell more? Yes

I meet a lot of salespeople who say they could sell more “if”…

I met a salesperson in Florida who, a year earlier, couldn’t speak English. He started selling cars in a market that was down 50 percent. He learned English, and was on track to hit $100,000 his first year selling cars.

Did the word "tough" apply to his possibilities in sales? Of course! But he didn’t let anything affect his attitude, his goal or his level of success. He just did what everyone else tried to tell him couldn’t be done. I guess it’s a great thing he didn’t understand English in the beginning. He got successful before the lazy salespeople could make him understand success wasn’t possible.

That’s like the blind guy we talk about. He made $137,000 his first year. His disadvantage was not seeing. His advantage was not being able to pre-qualify people.

When Success Magazine asked him how he sold so many cars, he said, “I don’t know, but I bumped into four buyers my first day at work.”

Business is coming back, and you have a real opportunity to make 2012 not just your best year, but you have the chance to turn pro in sales, and that change will stick with you forever.

You don’t have to get from 10 to 30 tomorrow, but make a commitment to sell three more every month by the end of the second quarter. Do that four times and in one year you’ll have gone from 10 to 22 and more than tripled your income.

Do it for you and your family because you can, not because you have to.