Throughout my sales career, I’ve encountered high producing sales professionals who’ve experienced disappointment with their careers despite producing high levels of achievement. Coincidently, I’ve encountered low producing sales professionals who’ve defined their sales careers as a bad professional experience based on the perception of results. Both situations can be largely due to an over-emphasis of results vs. processes. Said another way, a journey should greatly outweigh a destination. Because who we become in the process is far more important than the superficial results that are derived from our efforts.
I impress upon you to consider that any results from individual processes (business efforts), whether good or bad, should have less significance than the creation and implementation of a real process. A real process of any professional will allow them to genuinely display his or her skills and talents to their market audience allowing the room for results but, with a unique self-awareness that the process itself outweighs the outcome, even if the outcome greatly surpasses their expectations or falls short of them.
When we become psychologically overcommitted to result-performance vs. refining a process, we unintentionally create an emotional distortion that does not lend itself to a high-producing environment. Moreover, this distortion perpetuates a lack of poise and composure which then creates the opposite effect of any intended results because, our viewpoint is one of scarcity and not abundance or a feeling of fear and not of joy. But, as you increase your self-awareness and become intimate with your efficacy you will begin to address areas in which you want to improve…such as, prospecting on the phone or in person, the art of engaging people, practicing an empathetic approach or closing a sale.
As you refine your process you realize that the desire to steer your own ship, the desire to steer it well and the need for the journey to mean something begins to outweigh results. Avoid measuring your impact in the moment because a good process tends to bear fruit in ways we cannot imagine. Your commitment to a process allows for you to become less susceptible to the results and keener to refining your process which, when done well, will be in line with your mission and providential flow will begin to occur.
Giving ourselves the experience of something new and wonderful such as greater impact will always require us to step outside of our comfort zone. When I decided to gain control of my mind my work did not change but, my emotional encounter with my work changed. And this freed me to become creative with the process and not emotionally dependent on the results.