Here we are, once again at the beginning of a new year. As you look ahead, what are your goals? What are the goals of your team and what are you most concerned about? As a sales manager or VP of sales, I’m sure you could create a long to-do list that, if executed well, will bring you great success in 2016.

But what is really different in 2016 than last year or the year before? I imagine that some of the problems that existed in 2015 also existed in 2014 and 2013. Most problems don’t go away just because we want them to go away.

Take my health for example. Last year, a doctor informed me that I had a health condition that changed my life. I knew I needed to be more mindful of my diet and exercise; my wife, Linda, had been telling me for 30 years. However, this is a difficult task for me, a man who loves to cook and eat. I’ve never been a heavy drinker, exercised fairly regularly, and aside from the occasional cigarette, thought I was living a healthy lifestyle.

But, it seemed, he needed to do more. I bought a FitBit, one of those watches that tracks your steps (recommended 10,000 a day, which translates to 4-5 miles depending on your stride length), and set up the online support program that allowed me to enter my food and water.

I immediately started monitoring my watch to see how many steps I still needed to get there before the day was over. Where once I went to the gym and did a heavy workout, my consistent lack of behavior had allowed me to gain weight. After a long day at work, who wants to exercise for an hour? So I changed my mindset and goals and started walking around the neighborhood to complete the goal of 10,000 steps a day. Now, I supplement my fitness program with exercises at the gym.

Surprise! Now that I am monitoring my daily habits, I realize how unhealthy they were in the past. In the space of a couple of months, I lost 20 pounds and didn’t gain a pound over the holidays, which was no small feat for me. Needless to say, I feel better, look better, and am healthier than I was before monitoring the things I can control.

Here are my suggestions for New Year’s Resolutions that, if implemented correctly, will eliminate many or most of your sales problems.

1. FOCUS ON THOSE THINGS YOU CAN AFFECT. Recognize that while you can’t control the economy or the world of sales, you can control how you approach it. Recognize that you must have salespeople who know how to prospect and communicate to find business.
2. MANAGE THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR PEOPLE. Inspect what you expect. You’ll be surprised to find that simply inspecting the right metrics will improve sales (or your health). A weekly meeting to review numbers will draw attention to underperformers. Nobody wants to be at the bottom of the board. Peer pressure is a valuable tool for getting results. Use it to take advantage of sales.
3. ELIMINATE THE EXCUSES. Stop making apologies for your sellers and stop agree them from their vendors. Introduce a sense of urgency into your sales culture. Too often, we accept unnecessarily long sales cycles. Teach your people how to work with prospects through the pipeline efficiently. Help them learn to weed out funnel clogs so they can focus on finding the prospects who will buy.
4. TRAIN YOUR PEOPLE. Focus your training and coaching to improve skills and change behaviors. Have your salespeople role-play. “Get them to ‘practice perfect performance’ so that when they’re under pressure, they can focus and sell.
5. APPLY THE 80/20 RULE TO YOURSELF. If you do 20 tasks week after week, there are probably 4-6 tasks that really matter. Those 4-6 tasks generate 80% of your results. Find out which 4-6 tasks are your Go-Tos. Spend 80% of your time on these to-dos.
6. APR – ALWAYS BE RECRUITING. Around 20% of your sales team is not performing properly. This 20% will never work properly. fire them To do this, you must be able to replace them. Recruiting is one of the 4 to 6 tasks that really matter. Spend time finding people who will sell.

Summary:

Success in sales is not that different from success in fitness and health. There will always be problems that exist beyond our control: we can’t control our genetics that predispose us to certain conditions, but we can control our habits like sleep, diet, and exercise.

By selling, we cannot control the economy or the consumer. But we can control our behaviors, such as prospecting and number of calls, number of appointments, etc. – which contributes to our personal and business savings. We can control how we interact with customers by learning how to constantly approach and stay in touch.

When managing a sales team, your job is to control those behaviors that contribute to the company’s sales. So while you can’t control John or when John makes prospecting calls, you can control inspection of his behavior and ultimately decide if he’s productive enough to be on your sales team.