Why commitment is so important to sales success

It's time for another edition of the?"Winning Sales Mindset" newsletter. This newsletter is specifically for individuals who want to get better at selling. Each week, I will be sharing hints and tips which apply if you are a business owner, CEO, sales leader, sales manager or sales person.?These hints and tips are all designed to help you create a winning mindset for improving sales.

As we start another week, I have decided to write about the important topic of commitment and it's impact on sales success. The dictionary definition of commitment is "a promise to do something or to behave in a particular way; a promise to support somebody/something; the fact of committing yourself."

For me, commitment is all about taking action. Without action, there are nothing actually happens. It is easy to set goals and targets, yet if we are not committed to them, then we are much less likely to succeed. Often the things we really want to achieve require huge amounts of commitment. Commitment involves doing the things that others are often not prepared to do. It also requires ourselves to get outside the comfort zone.

There are two types of commitment that we can have as follows:-

• Conditional commitment - this is when our commitment to achieving a task or a goal is connected to another event happening. For example in sales, it could be as follows. " I will commit to making 30 prospecting calls a day as long as I can leave at 4.30pm each day".
• Unconditional commitment - this is where we are all in. You could refer to this as full committed. We will do whatever it takes to achieve a goal or a task (in an ethical and professional way). Individuals who demonstrate unconditional commitment are "all in" and are much more likely to have a positive outlook.

A salesperson asked me last week if your levels of commitment to achieving a goal can fluctuate. There are clearly things which can impact on our level of commitment. These could include the following:-

• other people's mindset, particularly if we are surrounded by negative people
• receiving a lot of rejection from clients and prospects
• negativity generate by the news
• our own mindset

So what steps can we take to keep our commitment levels high?

• keep focused on the ultimate goal
• when the going gets tough, then make sure that you have other people who will encourage you
• break your goals down into bite sized chunks. It has often been said that you wouldn't eat an elephant in one sitting
• adopt a positive mindset
• recognise that there will be times on the journey to success when you will encounter significant challenges.
• when you face challenges then make sure that you step back and keep focused on your overall goal or task
• keep learning from set-backs
• remember that when you have unconditional commitment, then you are significantly ahead of the competition

Commitment drives action and it is action that leads to results. As a former sporting great said, it is easy to get out of bed in the morning for training when the sun is shining and you are feeling good. It is much more difficult to get out of bed for training when their are storms and your body hurts. The difficult and challenging times test your commitment.

So how does this relate to sales. Success in sales is not easy. It requires grit, determination and persistence. There are difficult things to be done in sales, such as prospecting, following-up, role plays, practice, continual learning, doing proposals and demos, the list is endless. I also forgot, keeping the CRM updated. All these routine tasks require commitment. I am sure as salespeople there are things that we would all like to be doing, apart from the disciplined things we should be doing. According to the research by Objective Management Group , 80 per cent of success in sales is due to mindset and one of the competencies which Objective Management Group evaluates is "commitment".

Those salespeople who are unconditionally committed have the right mindset.

So as we start the week, ask yourself how committed to your own sales success you are, or have you a half-hearted approach to your commitment....?

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