Here are some questions that’ll help your salespeople learn about themselves, how they make things happen and how they may hold themselves back. 

1. What have you accomplished?

Think about the past year. Write down all your achievements. If you sold a particularly difficult account, write it down. If you met or exceeded your sales goals, give yourself a pat on the back.

Don’t wait for customers or your boss to notice how good you are; do it for yourself. This exercise will make you realize how successful you have already been.

Your accomplishments are a reminder that you create your own success.

2. What were your biggest disappointments?

Now write down your disappointments from the past year — from times that you disappointed yourself, to times when prospects or customers disappointed you.

Realize that these disappointments are in the past, and the best way to deal with them is to learn from them.

While it may be too late to do anything about past failures, it’s not too late to do something about your future success.

3. What have you learned?

Look at your accomplishments. What did you do that worked?

Then look at your disappointments. What could you have done differently? Did you learn any lessons from your failures?

Ask yourself if you attack difficult problems quickly. What do you do when a long-term customer switches to the competition? How do you handle a complaint from a customer?

Changing just a few behaviors can radically improve your chance of success.

4. How do you limit yourself and how can you stop doing it?

Write down the ways that you limit yourself, such as: “I don’t prospect enough,” “I let gatekeepers keep me from seeing key accounts,” or “I give up too easily when a prospect raises objections.”

Whatever your answers, look at them and ask yourself what these limits have cost you. Many of them will correspond to the disappointments that you listed above, showing the connection between your thinking and the results you get.

Once you’ve identified the costs and benefits of limiting beliefs, decide if you are willing to stop limiting yourself. Try to switch a limiting belief into a more empowering one.

Write down the specific areas in which you’re not achieving what you want. Then write down how you’ve been justifying these failures.

5. What are your top 10 goals for the next year?

Select the 10 goals that are the most important to you. You can continue to work on other goals, but choosing the top 10 will focus your power like a laser.

Make sure meeting these goals is possible. If you can’t figure out how to reach a goal, you may have to switch it for another.

Make sure your chosen goals will lead to your best year yet. Goals you delete for now can always be added next year, because every year can be your best year yet.

Adapted from the book Your Best Year Yet by Jimmy Ditzler.

Tags: disappointments, failures, increased sales, lessons, questions