How to Construct an Award-Winning Sales Year

Creating an award-winning sales year is about planning and being intentional about the relationships you need to create and the resources you will need to win. Sales excellence is about understanding the playing field, proactively creating relationships, arriving with a unique perspective, and obsessing over people and process. Here are some steps to follow in order to create an award-winning sales year:

Focus on relationships: Build relationships with your leadership team and determine what a win for them would look like. Communicate your intention to have an award-winning year.Establish what your brand will be in 2023: Determine your unique strengths and how you can leverage them to help others win.Be intentional about growth and learning: Determine what impact you want to have and what outcomes you want to drive, both with customers and internally. Determine how you can parlay your unique strengths into wins for others.Prospect with quality, quantity, and consistency: Be intentional about your prospecting efforts and focus on quality, quantity, and consistency.Track progress: Keep a journal of contributions you make, impact you have, and outcomes that result. Pick KPIs, go down your list every day and ask yourself what you need to do on each account, project, or priority. Develop daily non-negotiables and ensure progress on key milestones.Control the controllables: Say yes to opportunities, understand the resources at your disposal, and create and nurture meaningful relationships.

In the face of rising customer costs, inflation, hybrid work, and supply chain challenges, there are still opportunities to succeed in sales. Control the quality of your messaging, meet people where they are, control the quantity of your outreach, and maintain consistency in your engagement. Focus on building relationships grounded in transparency and trust first and foremost.

Creating an award-winning sales year takes consistent execution of a process over time. Focus on building relationships, being intentional about growth and learning, prospecting with quality and consistency, tracking progress, and controlling the controllables. With these steps, you can construct the best year of your career.