Sales is a fun business. It’s exciting and varied and I love the strategizing and creativity that’s required. One of the challenges of being in enterprise sales is that things take time. A long time. You can work on a deal for months and maybe you’ll win it and maybe you won’t. The fact is, it can be hard to keep yourself motivated when you can go quite a while without a victory or a complete indication that you’re on the right track.
Since I’m sure this feeling is not unique to sales, I wanted to share the ways I’ve been staying motivated and excited and measuring my progress.
Utilizing your calendar for planning
What can I do to move my current opportunities forward today?
What can I do to generate new opportunities today?
When it comes down to it, these are the most important questions any salesperson can ask themselves when planning out their day. Depending on your role, you can modify these questions. The main idea is to get yourself thinking about how you can best use your time to achieve your goals.
Based on this (and all of the existing meetings on my calendar), I fill in my calendar with what I will do each hour or half hour to help me answer these questions.
Utilizing your calendar for reflection
What did I do to move my current opportunities forward today?
What did I do to generate new opportunities today?
What am I grateful for today?
I then reflect on my day and fill in the event with answers to these questions. By looking back at what I did for the day (the meetings I had, emails I sent, calls I made), I can see if I made progress that I’m happy with and it helps me think through how I can do better tomorrow.
This also gives you a great record of your small victories and is something you can look back on to help articulate your value and what you contribute/how you think through and make progress in your role. Whether it’s your resume, LinkedIn, an interview, or a performance review, this is an easy way to collect the information you’ll need to use again and again.
I also like to ask myself what I am grateful for over the course of the day. I tried to institute gratitude journaling into my routine in the morning, but I find that reflecting on one thing at the end of the day works for me.
How do you keep yourself on track and making progress?
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