Why You Aren’t Getting Faster Sales Results

June 27, 2012 at 12:00 AM
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One of the fundamental laws of our universe is that what you plant in the spring you will harvest in the fall. Not planting in the spring means having nothing to harvest later. If you're not seeing the results you want now, it's because you didn't do the work you needed to do some weeks or months ago.

When it's time to harvest, you can run around taking massive, desperate action. You can rush to plant more seeds than ever, and you can plant them with lightning speed. You can throw water on these seeds, and you can fertilize them. Still, you will have nothing to harvest for some time. To have something to harvest now, you would have had to have done the long, patient, lonely work when it was time for planting.

You aren't getting fast results now because fast results defy the laws of nature. If you find yourself in need of fast results, then you aren't doing some part of the long, patient, lonely work that producing those results requires. In long-cycle sales, your number at the end of the quarter is based on the work that you did (or should have done) two quarters ago, not the work you did in last few weeks. Those seeds need to be planted long before harvest time.

Our ability to rationalize our actions distorts the laws of nature. We overestimate what we can achieve in a short period of time, and we underestimate what we can achieve over a long period of time. We tell ourselves that we can put the work off until tomorrow and still achieve our goals, but we can't. They can't be achieved in the short period of time we have available. Once the time is gone, it's gone.

Whatever result you want is possible. To get that result you simply have to pay the price, in the form of time and effort, in advance. Getting the results you desire requires that you do the lonely work of planting in the spring.

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Anthony Iannarino is the managing director of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy, a boutique sales coaching and consulting company, and an adjunct faculty member at Capital University's School of Management and Leadership. For more information, so go http://thesalesblog.com/s-anthony-iannarino/

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