Anytime Business Resolutions

1. Be a better leader.   As the CEO or President, I will not let ego drive my business decisions. Instead, I will substitute business logic, research and input from others.
2. Base my business decisions on research.   As the CEO or President, I will not make up my team’s annual sales quota or target assignments in the backroom. Instead, I will calculate their goals based on a mathematical sales capture model that also looks at market opportunity size by territory.
3. Invest in my business.   As the CEO or President of my company, I will invest in outside sales training, marketing, and strategy advisement for my company, because I really don’t know everything and without increased revenue capture . . . we don’t need our other departments.
4. Accept accountability.   As a salesperson, I will not blame marketing, the services group, operations/engineering, or my boss when I do not hit my assigned sales quota. Instead, I will be a mature salesperson and accept   it’s my responsibility to be successful within the corporate environment I operate in.
5. Invest in myself.   As a salesperson, I will stop being cheap, accept that sales is my chosen career, understand that I am a professional, and actually invest my own money in career training to become more successful (at least 1% of my gross income a year).
6. Learn something new.   As a salesperson, I will finally admit that I don’t know everything and will actually try to learn some new sales methods, strategies and techniques to increase my success.
7. Make more money.   As a salesperson, even though I hate to cold call, I will cold call at least 40 new prospects a week, every week – because cold calling is still one of the best ways to hunt for new business and make more money.
8. Be more productive.   As a marketing department manager, I will focus on generating qualified inbound leads for my sales team first, work on branding second, and create brochures third. I will use the Marketing Equation of Interrupt, Engage, Educate and Offer, as part of my marketing tool kit.
9. Reduce stress.   As a sales management executive, I will not manage my team by emotions. Instead, I will manage my sales team by business metrics that are realistic and can be documented.
10. Help others.   As a manager of operations, engineering or corporate services delivery, I will stop blaming the sales department for client engagement problems and start working with them in tandem to deliver what I said we can do.

One Extra Resolution: To work at what I like doing – not just what I have to do.