Committing to Excellence This Year

New Years Resolutions are somewhat of an enigma to me. On one hand, I'm a huge fan of setting goals. I think without setting goals, I'd never have achieved the success I have in various different aspects of my life. On the other, I know that if you don't have a realistic plan for achieving them, they can get forgotten and discarded along the way. I've read plenty of self-help books that say that you greatly increase your chances for achieving goals if you write them down, even if you never look at them again--but I've also experienced plenty of years where I've written down a pretty audacious goal--then forgotten I'd ever even set it. That probably has more to do with writing something down that isn't alligned with what I was committing my efforts to. Which makes me think back onto the times I HAVE achieved success in certain areas vs. those areas in my life where I've fallen short. The one thing I've noticed is that in all of the areas I've excelled, I had made a determination that I was going to be as good as I possibly could be--whereas the times I've fallen short I just made the determination to do what I needed to do to "get by."

I was reading an article about Frank Mir, a UFC fighter who told a story about a time when one of his trainers asked him, "Do you want to be a figher? Or do you want to be a Martial Artist?" At the time, he didn't know the difference. He then learned that a Martial Artist continually improves himself. A Martial Artist realizes that he will never know all there is to know, and will continually strive to learn more from others, from his mistakes, from his failures and his successes.

The same could be said about Sales. Are you a Salesman/Sales Consultant/Employee? Or are you a Sales Professional? Or even, a Sales Artist? Are you continually learning? Or are you just plugging away, content with the "law of averages", or "it's a numbers game" philosophy?

Commit first and foremost to achieving excellence this year. Make the decision that mediocre is not enough in ANYTHING that you do. From the first opening statement with the first contact with a new prospect, all the way to closing the deal, and everything in between, make everything better. Commit this year to leaving the best voicemails, to improving your doubt resolution skills, to improving your project knowledge.

Above all, commit to being a Sales Professional--not just having a job. By adopting this as a way of life, you will have a far better year in 2009 than in 2008. Not just financially, but in job satisfaction and overall personal fulfillment.

Let's all have an amazing 2009. Happy New Year everyone!