The best sports teams spend a great deal of time preparing for their next game - analyzing past performances, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and creating a game plan for success. The best sales professionals do the same thing. They know what they're good at, what they need to work on, and where they stand in relation to their goals. Most importantly, they plan for success rather than wait for it to come to them. In short, they have a game plan.

Did you wake up today and realize that you don't have a plan in place? Are you too busy recovering from the end of March to begin worrying about April? One of the things that separates good salespeople from great ones is planning. Salespeople who set a game plan for the month know exactly what they have to do in order to achieve the results they want!

You can't improve what you can't measure. As a salesperson, it's vital that you keep accurate records of all necessary stats - UPs, demos, T.O.s, write-ups, sales, gross, closing ratio, etc. Having good information will help you determine what you're doing well; but more importantly, it will highlight areas where you can improve. So if you're talking to 50 people in a month, but only demo 6, you know that you need more work on your demo skills.