Break Things On Your Way To $1M In Sales

Posted on October 02, 2018 by Don Markland, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

Making $1 million in sales is not as hard as you think.

Much has been written about entrepreneurs and salespeople needing to overcome fear to be successful. We’ve heard Ted Talks that inspire us to act, seen the fire walks that motivate us to move and even read the stories that invigorate us to fight through fear, yet it seems that somehow the message doesn’t get through. Time and time again, too many entrepreneurs and salespeople succumb to fear. The problem is they don’t even know it.

Getting to $1 million in sales starts with simple, repeatable processes and a persistent mindset to break things and overcome your daily fears.

Yielding to fear can be masked in many forms that we feel are productive — it can be clouded in a myriad of busy yet seemingly fruitful activities. Researchers James Hayton and Gabriella Cacciotti from Harvard Business Review write that many entrepreneurs who are paralyzed by a fear of failure spend more time talking about issues rather than actually doing something about them. Instead of actively being on the phone trying to gain new customers, the entrepreneurs paralyzed by fear are stuck in conference rooms doing something like the following:

• Brainstorming why they need to call more customers

• Discussing reasons why they haven’t been calling customers recently

• Strategizing new ways to contact customers because calling doesn’t seem to be working anymore

In the end, they are talking and not doing. Many of those same entrepreneurs or salespeople would never suggest they are paralyzed by fear.

Don’t be confused by your own schedule, priorities or how busy you think you are; not taking action is always wrong (choosing to wait is taking action and different than neglectfully doing nothing).

You must train yourself to make action your default response, as Brandon Webb says in his book Total Focus.

Try what many leaders I know do and take on the mantra “break things,” or in other words, don’t be afraid to push yourself, your team and your business to the breaking point.

The three rules of breaking things:

1. Proactively Try To Break Things

Find the limits of yourself, your team and your business. Actively find problems in your business. Intentionally try to break processes or to create opportunities for chaos. This friction, frustration and compression will open new opportunities you didn’t even realize were in front of you.

For salespeople, try doing things you haven’t that you’ve told yourself won’t work like:

• Send a video text to your customers checking in on them.

• Send humorous GIFs that poke fun at your company or process during follow-ups.

• Use Facebook messenger in addition to SMS, email and phone to connect with your prospects.

These are three ways you could break things today. Be different and bold and watch what happens.

2. Aim To Your Potential, Not Your Quotas Or Objectives

Quotas and objectives are set by financial targets and economics. Potential is something higher. Aim for that. You have no idea what that capability is. Consider the following list: Apple, Disney and the Wright brothers, all of whom had detractors who thought they would fail. Many of them did fail when they first launched, yet they persisted even though some said that they shouldn’t.

Push yourself beyond whatever financial targets are set for you. Find bigger ideas and capabilities and watch yourself get motivated every single day to tackle new problems

3. Everything Is Fixable

Don’t punish mistakes, champion them. Many have heard Thomas Edison’s statement: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” It is time to stop repeating these cute sayings or posting them on Instagram and instead act differently. Create a culture amongst your team that encourages trying new things and processes. This takes real courage and guts but pays off every single time.

Important: Breaking Things Versus Recklessness

There is a difference between mistakes and mediocrity. As I’ve written about with The 4Cs of Accountability, a mistake is when someone using clean data, sound reasoning and good judgment still makes a wrong decision (which we all do). Mediocrity is when someone did not take the time to get clean data or set up sound reasoning or simply used bad judgment and made a wrong decision.

Breaking things is about being sound in your approach but still unafraid to press boundaries. Be bold in every effort to be better. As sales professionals and entrepreneurs, fear cannot hinder us in any way. In fact, in many ways, it should be a sign that you are on the right track.

Start to break things today and watch your sales, revenue and creativity soar.

This article was orignally featured on Forbes.com