1 Million Dollars in 365 days…

Being in sales for a number of years, I have seen many different strategies designed to get the best “outcome” for the salesperson. They are usually designed to meet a sales target, keep management happy, and make you feel good about yourself.

There are always many other factors that can influence your success in reaching your target. To give you an example, if you have a monthly sales target of say, 10 complete systems of whatever it is you sell, then the month usually goes like this:

The month starts off great - you are motivated, you’re getting leads from all over the place, surely this month you are going to smash the target! Week two is more of the same, lots more prospects in the pipeline, it’s going to be a good month. Week 3 and - hold on - we’re almost half way through

the month and I haven’t even closed any sales yet! Mad rush to get some sales under my belt. Before you know it, it’s week 4 and you are wondering where the time has gone!You are pulling out all the stops to close those sales, extra discounts, help from your colleagues, etc etc. This last week has been pretty hectic - but you manage to scrape by.

If you analyze what just happened, when was your time most productively spent? I mean, when did you take more action than any other week? In what week did you achieve the best results? - The 4th week! The very last week of

the month (for the purposes of this experiment, we are talking about February in a non-leap year, for all those folks who feel it is their duty to correct me and say there are more than 4 weeks in a month:-))

So what was different about Week 4? The pressure was on - that’s what was different! If you didn’t make something happen then the proverbial sh** is going to hit the proverbial fan!! After a few months on the job, acting like I described in the example above, I had a chat to my manager. He has a lot of experience in all types of sales roles, including commission only, management etc.

He posed the question -”What would your results be like if you acted like every week was the last week of

the month?”

I thought about it for a while, and then said I would give it a go. I haven’t looked back since. It basically boils down to me taking the actions needed to exceed my results, every week. Actually every day! The crazy thing is, I still manage to do all the other things non-sales related, admin tasks every week too. I used to use these as my excuse for why

the month got away on me!

I guess the lesson that I have taken out of this, is that in order to achieve drastic results, you need to take drastic action. I have a goal of exceeding my sales target every month, and for the last few months, that’s exactly what I have done.

The great thing is, I can now apply what I have learned to my newest goal - to earn $1 Million dollars in 365 days. So, on that note, I’m off to take some more action!

Einstein said E=MCsquared……I propose something else:

(m)T+(m)A=(m)R

Put simply: Thoughts + Action = Results. A Simple enough equation. What do the “m’s” stand for? We’ll come to that soon. Although I can’t take the credit for making this equation, I can certainly take the credit from using it in my everyday life!

If you followed the above equation (minus the m’s) you’ll probably start to make some traction in your life. For example, you might think that you might have a better chance at achieving something, so you might even take an action towards achieving that goal. If you keep this up, in a couple of years you might achieve your goal!

Now that’s probably the route that most people take. What other options are there? Well, you know how I always talk about being passionate? If you add passion to the equation then you basically fast track the whole process! Isn’t that great!

This clip has some great insights into passion in business:

Now back to the equation… - M stands for (more…)