Having clearly defined goals and tasks for each category that are key elements to you achieving your goals will also help you spot any weak areas that you will need to improve upon in order to increase your odds of winning.

How to Hold Yourself Accountable (And Make Bank Doing It)

Top salespeople are self-starters. But even self-motivated sales reps run into times where it’s hard to kick-start their own engines.

If you know what you want but are having a hard time staying committed to the game plan for achieving your goal, the answer is simple: You need to implement a system that will hold yourself accountable. I know, it doesn't sound fun but read on. It's not as bad as you think.

ac·count·a·ble - Required or expected to justify actions or decisions; responsible.

The keyword here is “justify”. That means you have to explain yourself to someone.

So how does this work in a sales environment?

Simple. Let’s say it’s your sales quota that’s the issue. You want to increase your odds of reaching it on a more consistent basis but you’re having a hard time staying motivated to do everything that’s necessary to achieve that goal.

Here’s what you do…

Step 1: Break up all the “selling activities” that you must do in order to hit your goal into specific categories such as:

*  Prospecting
*  Qualifying
*  Presentation
*  Objection Handling / Closing etc

And then be specific on what you must do / what your goals are on a daily / weekly basis for each category.

Example:  Prospecting

Minimum of X amount of new prospects per day
Minimum of X amount of first time calls per day
Minimum of X amount of follow-up calls per day

Step 2: Pick an authority figure above you that you will have to answer to (Think Sales Manager, VP of Sales or a Business Mentor)

Step 3: Meet once a week, preferable early Monday to go over each category.

The first time you meet you will want to go over what your goals are for each category for that week.

The second time you meet (and every time there after) you will first go over your previous week’s goals before moving on to what you hope to accomplish in the current week.

This is where the “justify” comes in. When you know you’re going to have a meeting to explain why or why you didn’t achieve your clearly defined goals & tasks, you will find that extra motivation to make sure you hit the mark. Plus having clearly defined objectives on a daily & weekly basis will act as a motivator in and of itself. We tend to do better when we see a clear step-by-step action plan laid out before us.

Extra Bonus:  Having clearly defined goals and tasks for each category that are key elements to you achieving your goals will also help you spot any weak areas that you will need to improve upon in order to increase your odds of winning.

One last thing…In the prospecting example I gave above, it’s not just about “doing more” as in calls per day… that’s just a small piece of it.

But let’s say through these weekly accountability meetings we discover a problem in the objection-handling category… we can now put in a resolution to solving that problem. Think of it has fine tuning your engine in order to run at top performance.  Hope you found this helpful.

Click here and learn  How Positive Thinking Can Lead to Success.