How Will You Reinvent Yourself in Q2-2010?

Yesterday marked the end of Q1-2010. It went by shockingly fast, didn’t it?

Did you make your quota?

Did you take the plant the seeds that will ensure a successful Q2-2010?

What were the significant changes that you made in your beliefs, your actions, and your daily disciplines over the first quarter of this year? How will these help you be more effective in the second quarter?

Normally, we like to save questions like these for the end of the year. There is never any reason to wait to assess yourself and your performance, but there is also no reason not to use a significant date or milestone to take an inventory of your performance and to start new initiatives.

You can reinvent yourself any time you choose.

How will you reinvent yourself in Q2-2010?

Reinventing Your Beliefs

Reinvention means becoming something better by building on what you were previously. It means chiseling off the ideas and behaviors that weren’t serving you in becoming all that you might be and replacing them with better ideas and better behaviors. Your success in sales, and in life, is mostly made up of who you are, which is made up of what you believe and how you act on those beliefs.

1. What beliefs do you still hold that no longer serve you?

Take the time to do an inventory of your beliefs. Which beliefs no longer serve you? Do you believe that success can be obtained through gimmicks, trick, shortcuts, or secrets? Do you believe something about selling that is no longer true?

2. What new beliefs do you need to adopt?

What new beliefs would serve you better if adopted? Are there other people around you who believe something different than you? Do those beliefs enable them to succeed more often and with larger prospects and clients?

3. What new beliefs or ideas do you need to put into action in order to improve your personal results and your sales results?

How can you put new the new ideas and belief structures into action in your daily life? How will these newly adopted beliefs improve your personal results? What do you have to believe in order to improve your sales results? How do you put that belief into action?

Note: My Q2 reinvention inventory is full of ideas about nurturing dream clients, which is sure to come out here as a series of blog posts.

4. What will you read, study and learn that will make you more effective in life and in sales?

What we believe is influenced and informed by the world outside of us. Much of it comes from who and what we choose to listen to, to watch, or to read. The most transformative of these choices is what you read.

What should you make time to read in Q2 that will provide you with the greatest chance to explore new and useful ideas? What will you read that might challenge your long held beliefs about sales. What will you read that might challenge your long held beliefs about what it takes to succeed and what it takes to have a meaningful life?

Reinventing Your Activity

Reinventing yourself means spending your time and your energy on new ideas, new tasks and new behaviors. It requires that you break from your past beliefs that drove ineffective past actions and activities. It is a chance to take inventory of these ideas and tasks and to shed the ones that are ineffective, unhealthy, or no longer useful.

5. How will you spend your time?

You are made up of what you spend your time on. On what will you spend your time in Q2, and what difference will it make for your personal results and your sales results?

6. What will you stop spending your time and energy on?

What will you stop spending your time on? What do you spend your time doing that produces little or nothing in the way of results? How has spending your time and energy on these activities made your sales results less than they might have been? What time do you need to reclaim and put to better use in Q2?

7. (a) What actions will you take to be more disciplined in your sales activity?

What activities do you need to spend more time on in order to increase your sales results? What are the individual activities and actions that, if pursued and deliberately taken, would lead to greater sales performance?

7. (b) What actions will you take to be more effective on sales calls?

Activity doesn’t drive sales. Effective activity drives sales. What actions will you take to be more effective at the fundamental sales activities that success requires? How will you be more effective at prospecting? How will you do a more effective needs analysis or diagnosis? How will you improve your presentation skills?

8. What changes will others notice in you?

What changes will others notice in your behaviors and your actions? Will the changes you make be enough for them to be visible to those around you? Are they significant enough to be noticed?

9. How will these changes impact your performance for your clients?

How will the changes that you make to the activities and actions you take impact your clients? Will they notice a great improvement in the way in which you approach and manage their account? Will they recognize that you are taking new actions that improve your performance for them as their trusted partner?

How will your dream clients notice the change? Will they hear from you more often? Will the conversations be more meaningful?

Conclusion

There is no reason to wait for the calendar to change to reinvent yourself. But there is also no reason to miss an opportunity to take an inventory of what beliefs and actions no longer serve you and what you might replace them with to generate greater results. Use the start of Q2 to reinvent yourself!

Read my interview with Tom Peters (Part One and Part Two).

Read my Blogs.com featured guest post on the Top Ten Sales blogs.

Read my monthly post on Sales Bloggers Union.

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