Starting the new year right.

Through my decades in the sales profession, each year begins with a ritual.

I don’t burn incense.

I don’t eat my favorite dessert for the first seven days of month.

I don’t wear my favorite sports team's socks, watching Glengarry Glen Ross, and scrolling through Cadillacs on Google. (If you know, you know.)

The act of the sales ritual may sound crazy to some, but I know people that do this religiously.

My ritual involves the process of what I call ‘resetting’. Resetting is about becoming more attuned to the current professional frequency I am on.

Simon Sinek wrote a book called ‘Start with Why’. If you haven’t already done so, READ THIS BOOK. There is a wealth of great points to get your intellectual curiosity going. The book speaks to purpose. And at the heart of your decision making, purpose should be front and center.

Every year I reset in the following areas:

·???????Professionally

·???????Productively

·???????Personally

My goal is each of these areas is to assess key opportunities for growth.

Professionally resetting involves me looking back. It forces me to objectively look at my lost opportunities as much as I revere my wins.

Retrospection is my weapon of mass construction.

I deliberately ask myself hard questions relative to my performance.

For example, where did I miss a step in the discovery process? Why did I take so long to engage a prospect again after our initial meeting? How effective was my last outreach email? Did I ask for the meeting or the business when I should have?

Sales is simultaneously a competitive team and individual sport.

If you don’t ask yourself the tough questions, who will? Your competition has no interest in watching you get better. Especially if you are in the top spot. The mission is to take you down a wrung on that ladder.

Productive resetting is about the amount of time and energy I spend, and where I spend it.

If I spend too much time chasing down a prospect that won’t return a call or email, that is unproductive. If it takes me three days to bounce back after the sales meeting that shows I am behind on my quarterly revenue projections, that is unproductive. If I keep focusing on the administrative aspects of my role and don’t focus on prospecting new business, that is unproductive.

I reflect on my year month by month to uncover unproductive areas of my behavior and tweak them. To try and recreate myself and my challenged behaviors is unrealistic. So, by consciously tweaking them, I keep them in front of me. And they don’t get a foothold in my day-to-day activities.

Resetting my personal life may be the most difficult of the three. This involves getting my house in order. Both literally and figuratively.

Family can be that extra arrow in a salesperson’s quiver. It can also be their Kryptonite. Nothing can disrupt a salesperson’s plan like their personal life running amuck.

Before I get my new business goals each year, I try to establish mutual family goals with my wife and partner. I am intentional when I say “partner.” In the personal business arena, she Executive Director of a consulting firm we created. I handle Development, and she Operations. We must be on the same page if the family is going to operate optimally too. Our professions and familial areas of responsibility are mutually important and deserve equal respect and considerations.

When I can be deliberate about growing in the areas I’ve shared with you today, I have had some of my most prosperous years in business. It doesn’t mean that challenges haven’t come. It does mean that I was far better equipped to maneuver those events when they presented themselves.

I hope you take a nugget or two away from this post and have the most prosperous year you have had in a long time.

Do me one favor...check back in with me and let me know how things have gone this year.

Let’s go to work!