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Tag: Strategic Thinking

  • This Single Sales Productivity Hack Is How I Made $5.7 Million in Personal Net Sales My First Year | Entrepreneur

    This Single Sales Productivity Hack Is How I Made $5.7 Million in Personal Net Sales My First Year | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    It was mid-2019, and I found myself at an uncertain crossroads in my career. After a long, fruitful stint as VP of Sales in the wireless industry, a merger tossed me out on my tail with no golden parachute, fallback plan or even a dinghy to navigate the shifty waters of the job market.

    With the urgency hovering, I had to secure something quickly to replace my income. This led to securing one of the first few opportunities that presented itself — a commission-only solar sales position. Hearing the earning potential, I dove in headfirst.

    Having no prior experience in solar, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a bit nervous. But one thing was certain: I’ve always thrived off of challenges and was ready for the elevation process to start over in a booming new industry.

    For me, the elevation process is what has always fueled me, not the prize itself at the end of it. Where’s the fun in laying a dead gazelle in front of a lion? It’s the chase, the adrenaline of proving myself to me and exceeding my own expectations that keep me fired up and ascending to new levels (okay, sure, and maybe the necessity to succeed so my family didn’t end up homeless had a little bit to do with it as well.)

    Nonetheless, I knew my previous sales experience equipped me with the skills and resourcefulness to win, but what I didn’t fully appreciate just yet was the impact of a single productivity hack that would become explosive for my results in a commission-only setting. This hack is what I attribute to bulldozing my way to the number one spot on the earnings leaderboard and obliterating company records for most earned, ever.

    Related: There Is No Success Without Risk

    The power of tenacity

    Sales isn’t about tossing a product pitch and relying on luck for the customer to buy. Great salespeople, those who truly excel, understand that closing a sale requires a unique blend of tenacity, finesse and strategic thinking. However, being a great salesperson doesn’t automatically make you a great closer. You see, great closers are great salespeople, but great salespeople aren’t always great closers. Disruptive salespeople that close require a distinct mindset — the mindset of closing every single customer you interact with. Sounds unrealistic? Perhaps. But it is this very mindset that distinguishes the exceptional from the average.

    Understandably, you won’t close every deal — that’s an unrealistic expectation. But the power of a “close every customer” mindset gives you the potential to drive your performance to incredible heights. This mindset can transform one or two extra sales a week that you otherwise thought were impossible into doubling your sales results for the month.

    But the question remains — how do you cultivate this mindset? It comes down to having an unwavering belief in your abilities, and a relentless commitment to fighting for each sale as though it’s your last — no half-hearted attempts, no surrendering when obstacles arise. This isn’t about inflated self-confidence; it’s about resilience, tenacity, the unyielding will to succeed and the use of one simple hack.

    Related: Why Tenacity Is More Important Than Brilliance for Entrepreneurial Success

    The ultimate productivity hack for closers

    This hack isn’t some underground, newly developed technology or a secret script that has been hidden from the public in the underground tombs of Egypt. No, it’s much more simplistic but even more powerful. It’s what I call “success amnesia.”

    Success amnesia is the practice of mentally resetting after each victory. It’s about leaving past accomplishments behind and approaching each new opportunity as if you are under severe financial strain, regardless of the reality. It’s convincing yourself that you’re going into your next appointment as if you’re three months behind on rent and you can’t even afford a pint of milk for your two-year-old toddler — no matter if you’ve just earned a $20,000 commission on your previous appointment four hours ago.

    Related: 9 Successful Business Leaders Reveal Their Top Tips for Selling Anything to Anyone

    Success amnesia is an intentional forgetting of past wins, a deliberate reset that enables you to bring relentless determination to each new opportunity. It is this success amnesia that fuels your hunger to succeed, drives your tenacity, and compels you to disrupt the status quo in every interaction.

    If you take away one thing from my story, let it be this: Success amnesia can single-handedly alter your sales DNA, fortifying its strands with resilience and a hunger for disruption. It was this single mindset shift that cleared the path for me to generate $5.7 million in personal sales in my first year in the solar industry, or $320,000 in commission, despite having no prior experience in the industry. With the right mindset, relentless determination and the powerful tool of success amnesia, you can easily catapult yourself to the forefront of your industry and instill this practice into your sales force.

    Kash Hasworth

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  • 2023 Is the Year to ‘Marie Kondo’ Your Business — Here’s How. | Entrepreneur

    2023 Is the Year to ‘Marie Kondo’ Your Business — Here’s How. | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In 2022, business leaders were forced to play defense. While still recovering from the pandemic, we had to deal with the Great Resignation, soaring inflation and a looming recession.

    In many ways, last year felt like a never-ending wildfire — as soon as we put out one fire, another flared up. We tried to fix things with a flurry of meetings, committees and Zooms, but instead, we only got more stressed. By the end of the year, most of us were burned out and ready for the holiday break.

    As we seek to get out of this spiral, we need to ensure we do not have a repeat of the same stressors that caused us to burn out. We need to make space for strategic thinking.

    Related: 4 Ways To Sustain A Recession-Proof Business

    Do less to do more

    Often, our response to feeling overwhelmed is to try to get everything done: pinpoint every issue, schedule meeting after meeting and keep working until everything is crossed off our list and “perfect.”

    However, this mindset is based on a fallacy — a mistaken belief that we can get everything under control by doing more. The first truth we must acknowledge is that we will never get everything under control, and there may always be a fire blazing somewhere.

    Further, doing more rarely solves the problem; sometimes, it adds fuel to a fire that may have fizzled on its own. When we are overloaded with problems, meetings and emails, the first victim is strategic thinking. We do not have the time and space to consider our options before forging blindly ahead.

    Instead of holding another meeting, sometimes, we need to do less — pause the troublesome project or end it entirely so that we have the bandwidth to handle more pressing issues and strategize for the future without running ourselves or our employees ragged.

    Related: What You Need to Do to Get Your Team Ready for 2023

    Make space to prioritize

    During a reactive period, our capacity to prioritize degrades. So many things are happening that we do not know where to start. But when we don’t prioritize, everything becomes urgent, which wreaks havoc on our nervous system and makes it impossible to get much of anything done. We end up overworking ourselves — either everything is perfect, or nothing is.

    By doing less, we give ourselves the space to prioritize, asking, “What needs to be dealt with first, and what can wait?” When we take the time to prioritize effectively, we enable ourselves to focus on creating action plans that can accomplish what we want.

    Imagine a sales leader who’s feeling pressure from macroeconomic headwinds. They may double down on meetings with their salespeople, review forecasts repeatedly and become obsessed with each granular detail. In doing so, they might think they’re resolving the issue, but all they’re doing is making everybody anxious and wasting time — valuable time that could have been spent strategizing or making sales. Instead of another meeting, the sales leader might be better served by hitting pause and asking, “What do we need to be doing differently? Do we have the right people for this challenge? Is there an untapped market that we’re not addressing?”

    Related: Fighting the Secret Battle Tearing Apart Your Culture

    Don’t forget to breathe

    The first step toward making space for strategic thinking and behavior is simply to breathe. Breathing exercises clear space in our minds, allowing us to think clearly and ask important questions. Take a moment to pause and breathe before running full steam ahead. And once your mind is clear, ask yourself and your team these five questions:

    1. What are my top 10 projects?
    2. Which of these projects are the most valuable to our success as a business?
    3. Am I getting a return on the energy I put into my work?
    4. If I’m not, why? And what do I need to do differently?
    5. Are there projects I need to deprioritize or end?

    It’s okay to step away if something isn’t working. If you ever took a course in behavioral economics, you might remember the sunk cost fallacy — we think that because we’ve already invested time, money, and energy into something, we must see it to the end. It’s why so many people stay in relationships too long or finish a movie they already hate. It keeps us stuck in an unpleasant present instead of allowing us to make space for the things that truly matter or future opportunities we are not yet aware of.

    Related: How to Get Comfortable With Change and Build It Into the Foundation of Your Business

    Now is the time to revamp your business

    We’ve all heard the phrase “less is more.” It is high time we stop the pile-on of meetings and projects and calls and Zooms and take it to heart: cancel the unnecessary meeting, end the project that is not advancing and take care of ourselves as whole people, not just the bobblehead that shows up on Zoom.

    Strategic thinking doesn’t just happen. We must make space for it. We live in a time where it has become exceptionally difficult to protect and preserve that space. This year, take a Marie Kondo for business approach: “Is this project, meeting or call going to give me, my employees or my business more energy and fuel for the future?” If not, it’s time to let it go and make space for something that will.

    Jonathan Kirschner

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