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Whereas remorse anchors you to previous failures, reflection acts as a catalyst for future gross sales progress. This text and Gross sales Gravy Cash Monday Podcast episode explores learn how to break the “if-only” loop and offers a step-by-step year-end debrief that can assist you extract classes out of your wins and losses, guaranteeing you begin the brand new 12 months with readability and a confirmed system for achievement.
Discover:
- How you can get out of your remorse loop
- The ability of reflection
- How reflection creates consciousness
- A system for reaching your gross sales objectives
- 7 Steps to year-end gross sales reflection
Methods to Look Again at Your Gross sales Yr
For me, the final two weeks of the 12 months have at all times been the prospect to pause, take a break from the grind of promoting, and actually take into consideration what occurred over the previous 12 months—the nice, the unhealthy, and the ugly.
If you’re something like me and do the identical, there are two methods to look again in your final twelve months. You are able to do so with remorse or reflection.
These two opposing lenses are vastly completely different in the best way they have an effect on your view of the place you’ve been and the place you’re going.
The Hassle With Remorse
Let’s begin by unpacking remorse.
A few of you’re already feeling remorse about objectives you missed, offers you misplaced, alternatives that slipped by your fingers, or the individuals in your life you will have let down.
Remorse is that feeling you get while you look again on one thing you probably did (or didn’t do) and need you can change it.
In some ways, remorse is much like fear, besides it’s targeted on the previous as a substitute of the longer term. Fear is about what may occur; remorse is about what already occurred. That’s a giant distinction.
Though you’ll be able to flip fear into motion and alter the longer term, you can not rewrite the previous. No quantity of remorse adjustments historical past. All it does is create a suggestions loop in your thoughts the place you retain reliving your errors, misses, and failures time and again.
Why Gross sales Professionals Get Caught in a Remorse Loop
I’ve noticed so many individuals get caught on this infinite loop of remorse. They maintain lamenting, “If solely I had . . .”
- “made that decision.”
- “dealt with that prospect in a different way.”
- “taken that likelihood.”
- “been there or achieved that.”
These “if onlys” can paralyze you. They sap your vitality, crush your confidence, and maintain you from shifting ahead.
On one hand, remorse can push you to alter—you don’t wish to really feel that sort of ache once more, so you’re employed laborious to keep away from repeating the identical errors.
However, remorse can develop into a debilitating emotion that drags you into an exhausting and ineffective psychological loop of “would’ve, may’ve, ought to’ve.”
However regardless of what number of instances you full that loop, it doesn’t change the result. It turns into an emotional anchor that weighs you down as you begin the brand new 12 months.
The Energy of Reflection
Reflection, then again, is solely completely different—and way more productive.
If you mirror, you detach out of your feelings with objectivity to take a look at your whole physique of labor from the previous 12 months.
- You’re asking the questions, “What went effectively? What didn’t go so effectively? What did I be taught?”
- You contemplate the wins that made you proud and the moments you’d reasonably overlook.
- You determine why you received so you’ll be able to repeat these profitable behaviors.
- You extract worth from the teachings of failure.
Reflection isn’t about punishing your self for what went fallacious. It’s about gaining readability on why it went fallacious—and what you are able to do about it subsequent time.
How Reflection Creates Consciousness
Reflection additionally helps you discover gratitude in sudden locations. Perhaps there’s a hidden lesson in overcoming an impediment, or maybe you gained a brand new perspective as a result of a difficult individual got here into your life.
It’s essential to comprehend that every choice you revamped the previous 12 months formed your current circumstances. However you aren’t outlined by these circumstances, solely by the way you reply to them.
Reflection creates consciousness. The place there may be consciousness, there may be the potential for change. Consciousness is just like the solar; something it touches tends to remodel.
The underside line is that reflection is about studying, rising, and remodeling. Remorse is stagnation.
Why Reflection Issues at Yr-Finish
The explanation I’m speaking concerning the influence of reflection as we shut out this 12 months is as a result of, for many of us, the slate actually does really feel clear come January 1st. Within the gross sales world, we get a brand-new quota and brand-new targets. There’s an air of chance as we expect:
- “This 12 months goes to be completely different.
- “This 12 months, I’m going to crush my numbers.”
- “Hit my earnings targets.”
- “Make it to President’s membership.”
- “Get a promotion.”
- “Lastly, shut that dream account I’ve been chasing.”
However when you don’t take a second to mirror on what labored and what didn’t, you’re prone to end up repeating the identical missteps. Reflection is like an inner debrief—an opportunity to say, “Right here’s what occurred, right here’s why, and right here’s how I’m going to repair it.”
Why Readability Arises From Reflection
Let me offer you a private instance. A the start of final 12 months, I set a purpose for my gross sales coaching firm, Gross sales Gravy. This was a giant, daring, visionary purpose that might remodel our group and in the end double our gross sales.
I proudly and confidently informed my crew that it was going to occur. After which, in an embarrassing crash and burn, I failed miserably.
Definitely, I may have stewed in remorse, beating myself up and permitting my self-talk to run wild about how I fell brief. However that might have been a waste of time and vitality.
As an alternative, I selected reflection. I requested myself, “What occurred and why didn’t I obtain this purpose?” As I mulled over these questions, the solutions got here extra clearly than I anticipated.
One of many largest insights I gained was that I’d set this huge purpose, however didn’t set up a system or plan to make it occur. You see, a purpose with no system is mainly only a want—as they are saying, “hope just isn’t a method.”
Construct a System that Helps Your Targets
If, for instance, you set a purpose to prospect 100 potential prospects per week, however you haven’t constructed a disciplined each day routine, constructed focused lists, put aside particular instances for calls, and created accountability checkpoints, it’s not going to stay. Life will get in the best way. Ultimately, your huge, daring purpose will get overshadowed by 1,000,000 different duties. And not using a system for reaching the purpose, you shortly succumb to self-discipline fatigue.
That is precisely why reflection might be your greatest good friend at 12 months’s finish. It lets you personal your failures with out letting them outline you, and it helps you leverage your successes by pinpointing what you probably did proper.
Remorse says: “You tousled. You’ll by no means repair this. It’s too late.”
Reflection says: “You tousled. Now let’s discover out why, be taught from it, and do higher subsequent time.”
How you can Conduct a Yr-Finish Gross sales Reflection
To show previous efficiency into future progress, observe this 7-step systematic reflection course of:
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Search Silence: Carve out half-hour in a quiet atmosphere with out digital distractions to make sure deep focus.
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Audit the Timeline: Mentally journey by the 12 months, month-by-month, ranging from January, to recall particular objectives and market circumstances.
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Have fun Wins: Determine particular offers and relationships that succeeded. Acknowledge the private milestones that boosted your confidence.
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Isolate Profitable Behaviors: Decide the precise habits and mindsets that led to your successes so you’ll be able to flip them into repeatable techniques.
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Analyze Failures Objectively: Pinpoint the objectives that stayed out of attain. Ask “Why?” to uncover the basis reason behind the miss with out self-judgment.
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Construct Methods, Not Simply Targets: Change “hope-based” methods with disciplined routines, focused lists, and accountability checkpoints.
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Apply Gratitude: Determine the “silver linings” and classes realized from challenges to take care of an optimistic outlook for the brand new gross sales season.
Right here’s the large takeaway: Remorse is the enemy of progress; Reflection is the catalyst for progress.
Get your New Yr off to a profitable begin with Jeb Blount’s fashionable on-demand course: The Necessities of Setting Profitable Targets
