Sales failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. Sales stagnation, territory shrinkage and lost market share doesn’t happen overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking, poor planning and poor choices. To put it more simply, failure to grow sales is nothing more than mistakes in judgment, complacency or the attitude of being in a comfort zone repeated every day.

Now why would a sales person make these kinds of errors in judgment day after day? The answer is because they don’t even realize it or even if they do he or she does not think that it matters.

On their own, our daily acts do not seem that important. A minor oversight, a poor decision, or a wasted hour generally doesn't result in an instant and measurable loss of sales. More often than not, there is no immediate consequence to our sales efforts. Maybe a missed opportunity or a lost order is the result but unless it’s a major deal the situation is generally not significant enough to create a “personal ability reality check.”

If you have not bothered to make a cold call, if you have not bothered to prospect for new account development in the past ninety days, this lack of discipline may not seem to have any immediate impact on your sales life. And since nothing drastic happened to you after the first ninety days, you repeat this error in judgment for another ninety days, and on and on it goes. Why, because there doesn’t seem to be a major consequence. And herein lies the great danger. Far worse than having little focus on prospecting or new account development is not even realizing that it matters!