The best sales teams understand the importance of being adaptable in this ever-changing economy. Is your team struggling to stay motivated for the long haul or having difficulty adapting right now?
We know that staying motivated is more complicated than ever following the rapid shift to remote work due to the global pandemic. As a result, many businesses are scrambling to meet their buyer’s and their business’s evolving needs while also balancing personal and professional uncertainties.
As businesses start to open back up, sales organizations wonder if we will ever go back to face-to-face selling or if working from home is the new normal. Though no one can predict what the new “normal” will be, it is almost certain that things will not be going back to exactly the way they were. Many buyers prefer remote interactions, while B2B leaders believe that a mix of selling channels is a more successful way to develop business.
It’s safe for sales teams to assume that the best strategy is to be flexible about where and how you interact with buyers and potential new clients. It’s also essential that in this current environment, you stay motivated.
Especially if you’re used to working in an office space, you know that real challenges come with working from home. Often you have less structure around your day, distractions and interruptions are never-ending, and it’s easy to fall into bad work-day habits. Here are a few ways to help build your motivation and stay focused so that even as we figure out what is going on in this crazy world, you can achieve your sales goals.
Reach Your Sales Goals With These Motivation Tips
Read on for seven action steps you can take that will hopefully help you increase your motivation so that you can still be proactive, no matter where you’re selling.
Plan Action Steps Every Week
The first thing you should do every week is to clarify which tasks you need to complete and make a plan for them. Identifying a to-do list is called task clarity, and many people believe that simply identifying what needs to happen on any given day is highly motivating. Spending even just half an hour a week planning your weekly actions is enough to align your focus and help you feel empowered to take action.
Block Out Time On Your Calendar
There are countless studies out there that back up the idea of time blocking and adding task lists to our calendars. When you write something down and add a deadline, you are much more likely to do it.
We suggest blocking out time to devote to your tasks, primarily the actions that will bring you closer to achieving your goals. Only you know the most critical items on your to-do list, so prioritize those activities by setting aside blocked-out time to focus entirely on that one thing. When you add it to a calendar with alerts, it’s a lot harder to procrastinate.
Do Your Greatest Impact Activity (GIA) First
While you’re working on time-blocking, it’s crucial that you do your greatest impact activity (GIA) first. A GIA is the one activity that will get you the greatest return on your time investment. Usually, these are the activities we dread the most, and so we put them off. But, when you do it first in your day, it’s out of the way, and then you have more time in your day focusing on the rest of your list and less time to procrastinate that high-impact activity.
Track Weekly Progress
Along with planning your high-impact activities, planning weekly goals, and blocking out time in your planner, you must track your progress. Track them with another person that you can be honest with. You are much more likely to achieve your goals when someone is holding you accountable and keeping tabs on your progress.
Implement Positive Self-Talk
More often than not, the one thing that is holding you back from getting work done is you! If you don’t believe that you can get things done, then you won’t. So change the way you talk to yourself, and reframe the way you think about yourself.
For example, you might be thinking, “I am so terrible at leading these meetings.” Instead, tell yourself, “I know what a great meeting looks like, and I’m going to learn how to implement those strategies into my routine.” At the end of the day, if you think that you can’t, you likely won’t even bother to start. Giving yourself a boost of confidence will help you stay focused to get those task lists done.
When you implement positive self-talk, you can change your mindset and give yourself the encouragement you need to take initiative. One simple tip is to give yourself a countdown before important tasks. For example, “3… 2… 1… Go!” and immediately get started on the project.
Our brains only give us a short amount of time before we start thinking our tasks are too hard or overwhelming. Giving ourselves a countdown can help interrupt our own hesitation and anxiety and help us get fired up to continue our work.
Refocus Your Intentions Daily
A great tip to help you increase your daily motivation is to set daily intentions every single day. For example, when you turn your computer on in the morning, say your goals for the day out loud. If you have a bad habit, like checking social media too often or getting distracted by the news, then tell yourself you will not do those things. Reaffirming your goals and acknowledging the bad habits can help you pull focus to the things you actually need to focus on. Ask yourself, “Will I focus and spend time on my greatest impact activity and avoid (bad habit)?”
Sometimes merely acknowledging the tasks and the bad habits you might use to avoid work can help focus your mind and keep you motivated on what you need to get done.
Let Altus Alliance Set Your Sales Team Up For Success
We hope that these tips and tactics will help you stay motivated and set yourself up for success regardless of the economy. So whether you’re selling in-person or virtually, traveling, or just plain struggling with sales, Altus Alliance would love to help your organization stay motivated and hone its skills.
We’ve been helping sales teams increase their revenue for years, and we have plenty of motivation tips to help you reach your sales goals, plus the experience and tools necessary to back up our strategy.
Reach out to our team today online or give us a call at (206) 438-1890.