Today concludes our “restart button” series about renewing your efforts to achieve your goals this year. In every economy—especially during a downturn—it takes action to bring about results. With that in mind, we spent the past several weeks encouraging you to do several things:

• develop and perfect your “elevator pitch” (be ready to concisely convey exactly what you do);

• develop conduct a self-assessment (a shaky economy exposes weaknesses and undermines confidence, but it doesn’t have to be that way if you’re on top of your game);

• become an advisor to your clients (be more than they expect!);

• get out there and see people (this is one of the most fundamental activities you can do to create and build successful, profitable relationships); and, finally,

• utilize all the tools available to you (this goes hand-in-hand with the self-assessment we urged you to do).

If you’d like to review the multi-week series (which started on April 6), go to www.corsini.com and access our archived e-newsletters. You’ll find many workable tips on how you can still achieve your goals this year—even though the year is nearly half over.

Our hope is that you have already started to integrate our tips into this year’s success plan. These ideas are particularly suited to those of you in sales. (That said, I encourage you all to think about this: Really, at some point or another, haven’t we all been involved in sales either directly or indirectly?)

Several of these Points we’ve explored are explained in more detail in my newest book, Do What You Do Better for Salespeople, where my Corsini Sales Model features these four core components:

• having a strategic sales plan that includes your goals and a workable pipeline of current and future opportunities that we call our Best Bets™ and Future Best Bets™;
• being an advisor to your clients and new relationships;
• maintaining a year-round high level of activity;
• having some type of accountability to keep you focused and on track to achieving your goals.

Those are the tools you need. You know your goals. Now I’ll call an important question: “What if failure was not an option?”

Here are a few more things to consider: “What if your only option was achieving or overachieving your goals? What would you do differently today, if it were to come down to success or nothing? What would you do more of? What would you stop doing altogether?”

I remember hearing a story about the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez, who burned his ships so his troops had only one option: stand up and fight. Retreat simply wasn’t possible.

Now times are hard, but, thankfully, they aren’t nearly that desperate. But think about it: If you absolutely had to succeed, I believe you would face the fears that are keeping you from being as successful as you can be. You would begin today—right this very minute—to stretch your limits. You would realize over the course of this year your true potential. And who knows? You might even have the time of your life as you acknowledged your fears, your worries and your limitations and knocked them down one at a time. With no other options, you’d figure out—right quick—how to be successful.

In this down economy, we give ourselves outs. We allow ourselves to underachieve. We tend to have a great many good excuses for underperforming. The economy is terrible. Everyone’s performance is off. It’s hard out there. Production is down everywhere. People can’t get financing. Nobody is buying. (I don’t need to give you more excuses, but the media will—so beware.)

If your only option was success, you wouldn’t need an alarm clock every morning. You wouldn’t waste time in front of the computer each day reading unnecessary emails. (Either you’d read them at night, on weekends or you’d ignore 90 percent of them.) You’d not procrastinate. You’d also not try to do everything yourself (you’d delegate so you could work smarter). In fact, there are a whole bunch of “don’ts” that you’d impose on yourself if your only option was to succeed.

You would be motivated—very highly motivated—to only do the things that would get you closer to your goals. You’d have laser-like focus, and you’d feel beyond satisfied when you reached your goals. Your job situation isn’t do or die, but why not go for that feeling anyway?


What if success was your only option? What if failure to reach your goals was absolutely not an option? What would you do more of, less of or stop doing all together? What fears would you face head on? What things would you stop procrastinating about and approach with a new and sudden sense of urgency? I challenge you to Do What You Do Better by telling yourself that success is your only option.