Change Your Commitments and Change Your Life

Last week I got a call from "Mark" who has been a financial services professional for 12 years.  He said he works far too hard for the $80,000 he earns.  My response was, "What are you committed to?  

He replied, "I want to make a lot more money and work less."  

"I make as many appointments as I can and I try to persuade every one of my prospects to buy from me.  But then, I really try to help them."

"That is a selling strategy that you are committed to and that strategy is not working," I said.  "It is obvious that you need to change your sales strategy."

In sales, and in life, commitment is everything.  Yet, most people cannot accurately articulate what their commitments are.  They make a sincere stab at it by telling you what their ideals and goals are.  However, evidence shows that what you are committed to is seldom the same as your ideals and your goals.  So, what are you really committed to?   The answer to that is simple. You are committed to the life you have now.  

Your commitments are evidenced by the results of all of the actions that you take to attain what you are committed to.  All of the choices that you make, every minute of every day, are in support of your commitments.  If you are happy and satisfied with the life you are living now, then your commitments are aligned with your ideals and your goals.

If you are not happy and satisfied with the life you are living now, then your  commitments are not aligned with your ideals and your goals.  Knowing and accepting that is the first step towards having the life that you want.  The next step is to figure out how to change your commitments to achieve what you want.  It starts with reexamining all of your activities to determine which of them are forwarding your ideals and goals and which are not.

You may be committed to:

• Find more prospects by working longer and harder;
• Make tons of cold calls, while bearing the pain of rejection and failure;
• Struggle heroically to overcome difficult obstacles in order to succeed;
• Get all prospects to like you by establishing "rapport" and commonality;
• Show prospects how to solve important problems;
• Persuade and convince prospects with logic and factual documentation;
• Use sophisticated closing techniques to help prospects decide;
• Manipulate, control or dominate people in order to get what you want. 

Yet, your income might indicate that those commitments are not producing the results that you want.  

Your commitments dictate the choices that you make about what you do every day, and how you do it.  Change your commitments and you will change your behaviors.  That will change your life.

If you want to learn the process and mindset of top producing salespeople, you want to learn more about High Probability Selling.

Until Next Time…Sell Well

Jacques Werth, President
High Probability Selling

Copyright 2007.

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