Making Sales or Excuses?

Making Sales or Excuses?

Making Sales or Excuses?

Are you making sales or excuses? Or are you making excuses for why you are not making sales?

Every successful sale is the outcome of a series of consistent behaviors and actions. Consistent behavior plus sales activity equals results. This is called sales accountability and if you do not have it, you need to get it.

Most people view accountability as something that happens to them or is inflicted upon them and they choose to perceive it as a heavy burden to carry. They think about accountability as a concept or principle to be applied only when something goes wrong or when someone else is trying to pinpoint blame.

Many people define accountability this way, so it is no wonder they spend so much time explaining and justifying poor results. Lack of sales accountability produces dismal results and excuse-making decreases sales. No one wins when you suit up to play the blame game.

When professionals encounter a less than hoped for result, they begin preparing their explanation and start reciting the typical tired overused excuses. Here a just a few of the many hundreds I hear sales people use every day:

• The marketplace is tough, companies are not spending money right now
• no one returns my calls or I cant get anyone to pick up their phone
• Our market’s shrinking, and everyone’s cutting prices
• If my managers would get their act together, we would be able to meet our goals
• Our advertising is ineffective so our leads are terrible
• I cannot make my numbers, the market is too soft.

As a result, professionals expend their valuable time and energy justifying their lack of performance instead of focusing on ways to improve it.

A better definition of accountability is to make a shift in the attitude of how you view things. Continually asking “what else can I do to rise above my circumstances and achieve the sales results I desire?” It is the process of seeing it, owning it, solving it, controlling it and just doing it. It requires a level of ownership that includes doing what is necessary and focusing on proactive accountability, instead of reactive excuses. Are you making money or making excuses? Are you winning or losing? Changing or blaming? The choice is always yours.