New Year, New Salesperson

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Are you sticking to your business New Year’s resolutions? Or should I back up and ask if you even made any resolutions in your business? I recently read that about 72.4 million Americans (18 and older) were planning to make resolutions for 2020. 
Here are the top five resolutions:

 1. Exercise more
2. Lose Weight
3. Save money or at least spend less of it
4. Learn a new skill or hobby
5. Quit smoking

 Notice how none of these are business-related? Sure, you might want to save money if you are one of the top dogs at your organization, but most salespeople aren’t as concerned. While you likely set goals for the year, goals are different than resolutions. Goals are measurable and come with a timeline. 
Things that might fall under goals include:

 1. Monthly/Quarterly sales numbers
2. Number of weekly sales calls
3. Number of new customers obtained
4. Percentage of Gross margin achieved
5. Number of vacation days scheduled

 I bet I surprised you with that last one. Time off is an important part of sales and should be part of your schedule. You don’t have to fly off to somewhere fancy (unless you’re able, then you should), but taking time off to reset will help you to be a better salesperson. This leads to one of my own resolutions for 2020…unplugging.




Like many of you, I live my life on some sort of electronic device. When I’m not in front of my laptop, I am able to receive messages from one of my three tablets, my work phone, and my personal phone. My work follows me wherever I go. And while my wife would love for me to unplug more at home, this is about unplugging AT THE OFFICE! You read that right, I mean taking time out of your schedule to turn off your notifications so you can focus.

You see, one day my assistant approached me about how I seemed incredibly distracted in the office. My writing had become disjointed thanks to several interruptions per hour. The notification dings from my different devices not only were annoying, but they kept me on edge wondering if I was missing something important. She noticed that some days I focused more on my phone and email over articles and contracts that were due.

We’ve all read advice on setting time to return emails. This is solid advice, but it is often dismissed. But what I’m suggesting is to not just wait to return them, but also WAIT TO READ THEM. Every time you glance at a message, your mind thinks about how to respond and often thinks a quick response at the moment is better than waiting until 3:30 in the afternoon. But when one small message turns into hundreds, nothing gets done. I have started replying to messages at a certain time in the morning and again in the afternoon. I do my best not to schedule calls during that time as well. I have been amazed by the amount of work I have been able to accomplish just by not having the dinging distractions. My assistant has also noticed a change in the quality of my work.

So, think about something small that could have a big impact. It’s not too late to make a business resolution for 2020. Forget the Gregorian Calendar. Chinese New Year was just last Saturday (January 25th). My good friends tell me it’s the year of the Rat. Let’s resolve to make this the year we quit responding to these electronic dings and pings like rats scurrying through a maze. Keeping with the year of the rat thing, let’s rat out a bit more business.

Got resolutions? I’d love to hear about it!



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Frank Hurttte is the Founding Partner of River Heights Consulting.  He combines the battle scars of 28 years of front line "in the trenches" experience with over 13 years of service to knowledge-based distributors and their manufacturer partners. 
In his spare time, he teaches guitar to rats in mazes.


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