To succeed in 2025, focus on changing your mindset rather than blaming others for your sales failures. Take initiative, live within your means to avoid desperation, and set realistic goals for improvement. Embrace the unpredictability of sales, learn from lost opportunities, and prioritize mental well-being over perfection. If sales no longer brings you joy, consider exploring other career options.
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Your success in 2025 is not about going to the gym or eating differently. My suggestion to be more successful in 2025 is to think differently.
3 Ways to Think Differently and Improve Your Sales in 2025
It’s Not Them—It’s You
Do you work with idiots? Is your boss a moron? Do your prospects (those would be the ones who aren’t buying) just don’t get it? News alert. It’s not them—it’s you.
I’ve seen too many salespeople explain their failures by blaming other people. Sure, there are times when people you rely on let you down. This is different. This is when you have a pattern of regular failure at tasks where you should have been successful.
It’s your job in sales to figure out a strategy to make challenging sales situations work, even if your manager is not the best manager. Perhaps you can take some initiative to do better.
I have one piece of advice, especially if you do not have a good working relationship with your manager: do not ask a question you do not want to hear the answer to. It’s not defying authority when you make a decision and haven’t asked permission. You can always ask for forgiveness later. Asking for forgiveness is better than asking for permission. It’s even better when your actions are successful.
Live Within Your Means—You Can’t Have It All
I can think of few things worse than a salesperson who is desperate and trying to make a sale. Prospects can smell desperation; desperation is not part of a persuasive strategy.
What makes salespeople desperate? You can become very desperate if you are worried about paying your bills or feel like you are contributing to your failure if you outspend what you make. It’s stressful if you are not contributing to your retirement (or participating in an employer contribution program for retirement).
Living within your means is about making choices. No, you cannot have it all. And more stuff is not going to bring long-term happiness. It just brings clutter which is another way to encumber you.
Be Kind to Yourself
If not you, then to whom are you kind? Make an honest plan for how you are going to work this year. Set realistic goals for how many new business calls you will make. Develop a sales call plan that allows for you to work and have your weekends free. Do you see any gaps in your ability to succeed? Start doing the work to fill in the deficiencies you identify—then get to work.
However, it’s time to realize that you are not going to sell to 100% of your prospects. A lost sale is not a failure if you learn from it and if you have more successes than failures. You will be more mentally healthy when your goal for sales performance in 2025 is improvement, not perfection.
This guidance is for those of you who see the joy in the unpredictability of sales. You relish the autonomy and challenges you have in sales. For those of you whose spirit is dying at each sales call, perhaps the only way to make 2025 better is to find other work outside of sales.
Now Is the Time to Achieve Your Sales Goals
Just beginning has a power of its own. As German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (or at least attributed to him) once said: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
Here’s to the power of your beginning and successful selling in 2025!
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