I want to share a technique I’ve learned that can change and improve anything in your life you want to change.

If you’re unhappy with your sales, your attitude, your skills, your work habits, your weight or anything else you can think of, you can change it in just three short weeks. Successful people in every walk of life have learned to use this technique to achieve positive changes in their personal lives and their careers.

If you think about it, don’t we do almost everything out of habit?

Don’t we dry off after a shower the same way each time, shave in the same routine, comb our hair the same way, always brush our teeth the same way, get dressed the same way, eat the same meal for breakfast and drive to work the same route each time – simply because that’s what we always do? Aren’t our lives pretty much a summary of all the habits we’ve picked up through the years?

Problem: Some of our habits aren’t good for us though, like eating a pound of bacon for breakfast every day, adding a little coffee to our cup of sugar or waiting for something to happen in sales.

We all do things we know we shouldn’t do, and we all do things we wish we did better. So let’s understand what causes us to do the same things over and over again, even when our old habits cost us sales.

Example...

It’s the last day of the month and you need two more units to hit your next bonus level. You’ve been doing things right, staying off price, following the Basics.

Now when you’re under pressure, you fall back to your old habits of rushing, pre-qualifying, skipping steps and trying to close on price, hoping to hit those other two sales.

Is that a good strategy or a bad one? If you said it’s a bad strategy, you’re right. It’s going to cost you big time. You’re five times more likely to make those two sales by following the basics than by trying those shortcuts!

That means you’ll be lucky to hit even one of them, much less both for the bonus. Speed kills sales!

Breaking a Habit

The easiest way to break a habit is to replace it with a new one.

You see ex-smokers chewing gum instead of smoking, and dieters switching to bottled water instead of 90-ounce sodas (flavored liquid sugar – with free refills).

Want to develop better sales habits? It’s easy, just start by making a list of the things you do now that you know you could be doing better. Then set a goal to improve.

Do you have poor closing skills?

Are you not asking enough closing questions?

Simple – just change your habit.

You know that 80% of the sales are closed after the fifth attempt, so carry at least five pennies in your right pocket and move them one at a time to your left pocket each time you ask a closing question.

By focusing on the pennies, you’ll ask for the sale more times. Move more pennies – make more sales. Do this for 30 days and you’ll also develop the habit of asking five times or more with every prospect.

Tracking is Critical to Changing Habits!

Most salespeople don’t really know how many prospects they talk to each month, how many incoming calls they get, how many presentations, demos or write ups they do, much less how many times they try to close the sale, how many unsold prospects they call, or how many of them come back in.

You have a lot of habits that can easily be improved – which means more sales and income. But without tracking every opportunity, activity and result, you won’t know what you need to work on to improve, so the first critical habit to develop is tracking every opportunity, every activity and every result.

Not sure where to start? At a minimum, every day track the number of ups you talk to, the number of demos, write-ups and sales for the day. Develop this most important habit of tracking everything you do and all of the other habits and changes you need to make to improve will become obvious.