As I look back on both my career as a sales person, there were many times when I would fight feverishly to make sales happen. I had many periods of both success and failure. There were times of plenty and times when sales dried up, like water in the desert on a scorching summer day. When I look at how inconsistent my activity and sales plan were, it is a miracle that some great things happened in my favor. No doubt that much of my early success was accidental. I was in the right place at the right time. While I’m thankful for this, it certainly was not a sound strategy to build a career on. In the sales field, there are and always will be factors beyond anyone’s control, no matter how good you are or are not.
The sales people who are consistently good and who stay in the race for the long run, are those who are what I call the “accidentally on purpose” sales people. While some of their sales success comes from being in the right place at the right time (accidental), the cornerstone of their success is build on the “on purpose” factor. They have intentional purpose and plan their activity and strategy accordingly. They know how to harness the things that they can control and do so with incredible consistency, never letting the highs become too high and the lows becoming too low. They see the sales and good fortune that comes their way by accident as icing on the cake, not the cake itself. They are thankful for the extra they get, but don’t count on it. Most of their success comes because of a sound, specific and purposeful plan of activity. They have clear goals in mind and continually know how to benchmark their success, always knowing where they stand. They don’t put energy, time and money into the factors they can not control. They simply let them go and put their reserves only into the things they can do, influence or control.
Antarcticmike's Blog 