Think a Lot

by Dave Kahle

It’s a challenging year for a lot of salespeople.  The world is changing rapidly, and every new headline contains information that seems to impact business in a significant way.  The competition is more active, customers are more discriminating, and nobody has enough time.

          There was a time, just a few years ago, when it was easier.  You could work hard for a while, and then you could relax and enjoy the fruits of your labors.  You would reach a point where life became easy, your customers were buying from you consistently, and you had your job figured out.

          That’s no longer the case.  Pressures are growing on your company to reduce their costs and become more productive.  The bottom line is this: You, personally, must become far more productive than you’ve ever been expected to be in the past.  Today’s performance, no matter how good, will not be sufficient tomorrow.

          Easier said than done. 

How do you go about dramatically increasing your results? 

My suggestion:  THINK A LOT.

          I’m not suggesting that you spend your time daydreaming.  Nor am I encouraging you to ponder the meaning of the universe, do a crossword puzzle or memorize the birth dates of all your relatives.  All of those exercises would represent ways to think a lot, but they are not the kind of thinking I’m advocating.

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          Rather, I’m encouraging you to invest your greatest single resource, your mind, in focusing your mental energy on specific portions of your job.  That means thinking about certain things, thinking in certain ways, and doing a lot of it.

          It’s easy to do your job by mindlessly going through the motions.  You see the customers with whom you are comfortable, quote the products they ask you about, grumble about the paperwork, and complain about price competition.

          That’s easy.  Unfortunately, it’s also a prescription for eventual failure.  The world is changing too rapidly today to do your job “mindlessly.”  Your customers are changing, products and vendors are changing and adapting, and new competitors and technologies are springing up.  If you go through your job mindlessly, you’ll soon be outdated and ineffectual.

          So on one hand, you have the need to improve your productivity to keep up with the pressures on your company, and on the other hand, you have the temptation to get into a rut, and go about your job “mindlessly.”

          The most effective strategy to battle these double temptations is to “Think A Lot”.  What should you think about?  Here are three of the most important things.

1. Think about your customers.

Ask yourself a series of questions about your customers.  As you develop the answers, write them down in your account folders, and repeat the process a few months later.  Here are some questions to get you thinking:

• What’s changing for this customer?
• What do they want to accomplish... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE