Bill Murray

Are perfectionism and procrastination opposite sides of the same coin? Perfectionism is a mental obsession with achieving the ideal as a minimum requirement. For some people, it is a conscious form of procrastination that prevents them from getting started on goals and projects.

Until you’ve completed your due diligence—stringently qualify the opportunity—and you know you’re on solid ground, you shouldn’t be working on “blueprints”—proposals and presentations. So, how do you stringently qualify an opportunity and make sure you’re on firm footing?

Have you ever had a “great” opportunity turn into a not-so-great opportunity and you didn’t know why? If so, you’re not alone. Most salespeople have had a similar experience at least once. Many have had the experience more times than they care to admit.

Unfortunately, we find a lot of salespeople who believe that saying anything negative about their performance on a sales call is a bad thing. This makes the manager's ability to debrief mistakes and coach for improvement very difficult.

What do you do to improve the outcomes of your performance when you're conducting sales meetings, providing the coaching, and delivering the training? In other words, what do you do to become a better sales manager? Most sales managers would answer, "Not much."

Reinforcing behavior that we actually want people to end is called enabling. The salesperson has several strategies s/he can employ to stop enabling prospects to abuse the selling relationship.