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Do you want this year to be your best year in business and sell more than you’ve ever sold before? If so, here are four tips, plus two bonus tips, for having your best year ever.

Tip #1: Determine Why It’s Critical You Have a Great Year

What are you capable of if you set your mind to it? Pretty much anything, right? So, whether or not you’ll have your best year will pretty much come down to how compelling your reasons are for making it happen. Find your why in positive reasons for making this your best year and negative consequences if you don’t. The start of all great achievement is a burning desire in your heart and soul that simply must be fulfilled so, dig deep and find all the possible reasons you can for making it happen.

Tip #2: Make a Plan to Make It Happen

What does your best year look like from a numbers standpoint? Once you know that, you can make your business linear. How many new customers and how much business from current customers do you need? How many prospects do you need? How many phone calls do you need to make, how many doors do you need to knock on, and ultimately how many sales do you need to make to have your best year? You need annual, monthly and weekly goals, all broken down to daily activity.

Tip #3: Take Massive Action and Be Disciplined

Speaking of activity, the most successful people are people of massive action. They are also super disciplined, working on only high-payoff activities 80 percent of the time. The most important activities of a salesperson are: prospecting, presenting and closing. The fastest way to build business is by calling on tons of people both in-person or on the phone. Not email. You’ve got to get out and network, meet people, knock on doors, and ring phones. Your biggest problem is not enough people know about you. Do everything necessary to reach out to and introduce yourself to a ton of qualified prospects. Business and sales are a contact sport, it’s a numbers game. The more people you talk to, the more business you will do; even a blind pig finds corn.

Part of massive action is simply working harder. The harder you work by making more sales calls, the more your sales will increase. Want to increase sales by 20 percent? Simple, increase your sales calls by 20 percent. If everything stays the same: your contact rate, your closing ratio, the quality of prospects you’re calling on, your sales skills, etc., and you simply call on more people, you will automatically increase sales by the percentage of increase in the number of calls you make. So, what that means is: whatever percentage increase it will take to have your best year, simply increase your calls by that number and by the law of averages you’re guaranteed the result.

It takes lots of discipline to stick to these activities during prime calling hours. You’ve got to make hitting your numbers every day your number-one priority. This means you’ve got to guard your time closely against your biggest enemy: distractions. Distractions come in many forms: phone calls from friends and family, text messages, email chimes, social media, chasing a fly around your office for five minutes, paperwork you should be doing off-hours, and other urgent/unimportant tasks that steal your attention during the day. While most of these distractions simply pop up, many of us are also guilty of intentionally placing distractions smack in the middle of our day. Don’t do that. Don’t schedule doctors’ appointments, appointments with your financial planner, CPA, or anything else at these times. Obviously, there are times when you can’t avoid that, but you want to stick to this rule as much as possible. Also, don’t do paperwork and other non-time-sensitive activities during prime calling time.

Put up two signs, one in your office and one in your car, that say, “Am I working on my most important sales activities right now?” If it’s 5 a.m. and the answer is “no,” that’s fine. If it’s 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, and most of your prospects are on a standard work schedule, and the answer is “no,” that’s an issue.

Tip #4: Get Better at Selling

If you get better at all aspects of selling: getting to the decision maker, getting their attention, differentiating yourself, finding their pain, creating a solution, building rapport and long-term relationships, etc., now an increase in sales calls will grow sales exponentially. Even if you only get better in one or two areas, your sales will increase at a higher rate than if you simply increase the number of calls.

Bonus Tip #1: Get Rid of Excuses and Change Limiting Beliefs

Excuses and limiting beliefs are two of the biggest roadblocks to having your best year. If you have some excuses, keep in mind that whatever excuse you have, someone on the planet has had it worse and overcome it. Get to work and find the solution. Whether you believe you can or can’t, you’re probably right, as Henry Ford said. If you are having challenges in an area of your life it is due to incorrect or limiting beliefs. Find someone who’s successful doing what you want to do and copy their beliefs and their actions.

Bonus Tip #2: Be Uncomfortable and Scared Every Day

In order to grow personally and professionally, you must step out of your comfort zone and face your fears every day. The inability to deal effectively with fear and discomfort and not make the necessary number of sales calls is the main reason people fail in sales. The solution is to get comfortable being uncomfortable and to act in spite of fear. Make that call you’ve been putting off for months. Forget the email and go see that prospect in person. Find the biggest, scariest prospect you can, and make the call. You know which dragons you’re afraid to face. Go face them. You’ll ultimately discover that the dragons and demons you think are so bad aren’t, it was just your imagination giving in to fear and discomfort.

Finally, remember that life is pretty much 100 percent mental, the only thing between you and where you want to go is in your head. You can have your best year of business ever if you’re committed, but make no mistake, it’s going to take hard work and sacrifice. The only questions are: Are you willing to put in the time, effort, energy and money that’s necessary? Are you willing to give up the excuses and other crutches and pay the price to get it done? If so, put on your helmet, fasten your seatbelt, and go make this your best year ever!

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].