As a Sales Team Leader, your greatest challenge and opportunity is to help your salespeople focus on their Sales Skills Habits!
Your salespeople's lives are a reflection of their HABITS!
- If they’re successful, it’s because of their habits.
- If they’re mediocre, it’s because of their habits.
- If they struggle and are in debt, it may be because of bad habits.
Habits are the things we do, the way we think, and what we believe. A habit is the repeated thinking and behaviors that become automatic, so we don’t think about them or doing them.
In his book, Tiny Habits, Stanford professor B.J. Hogg discusses “habit loops.” The loops consist of three things:
- A cue is a reminder that triggers our thought or behavior. Like the cue line in a play, upon hearing the line, it reminds you to say your line.
- Then comes the routine. This is the behavior or action that the cue has triggered—the bit we think of as the habit.
- This is followed by the third part of a habit—the reward. This is the part that is of benefit to you in some way. Even though it might not actually feel like that, your brain is seeing its benefit. Because it’s a reward, your brain wants you to repeat it so that you will do it often enough until it becomes a habit.
Why do we need habits? They help us manage our minds. They save us brain power—or rather free up our brains to do exciting creative thinking. Making habits out of the things we do repeatedly, our behaviors and actions, provides our brain with a power saving or effort saving mechanism.
Habits matter because they hold great influence and sway over how we think, act, and feel. Because they are the brain’s shortcut, habits become automatic behavior. This is great if it’s good automatic behavior, but what if it’s not good behavior? We all have unhelpful habits that don’t support us in what we want in life.
Most salespeople have uphill hopes but downhill habits! They have good intentions, but hope, luck, and dreams aren’t habits. Habits are formed and honed by repeated daily behaviors. You can help them by encouraging positive habit loops that are easy to do.
