By Todd Duncan

To avoid the stink of a stagnant sales career, you must learn to grow with change. In other words, you must learn to keep a finger on the pulse of the market (something we hear quite often) and on the pulse of your clients’ needs and values, the pulse of your product or service, and your own pulse. It’s a good thing you have so many fingers.

I want to show you how to do away with stagnating and how to use an anti-stagnating strategy to ensure that you remain on top of your selling game now and in the years to come. Here are four steps that you must take in order to remain apprised of the constant changes in your sales industry and retain a lead on your selling competition:

1. STUDY YOUR PRODUCT LIKE A CONSUMER

There are so many product and service choices for consumers these days that there is now an entire industry dedicated to helping consumers make the right choices. There are Fodor’s travel guides, Zagat’s restaurant guides, the Robb Report for your expensive choices, and Consumer Reports and Consumer Digest to help you with just about every other product or service choice under the sun.

Of course, there are also the “top tens” of numerous other products or services every year in a number of popular magazines. All are dedicated to helping consumers make the perfect choice. And if you are to maintain a selling edge with your product, you must know what the consumer world is saying. Find the magazines or newsletters or books that provide surveys and guides about your particular type of product. Take a look at what they are telling your customers to buy. Read about the trends that are predicted for your product. Then do some shopping to determine how your competi­tors are positioning your product.

2. SURVEY YOUR CLIENTS REGULARLY

We've discussed the importance of transitioning your current clients to partners who have a shared interest in your success. When you’ve taken steps to ensure that happens with each client, keeping abreast of any changes in their wants, needs, or values is easy. In fact, the most effective and surefire way to pick up on such changes is to have an ongoing relationship with them. You can’t just send out a bunch of survey mailers and hope they get back to you. And by the way, when you meet with clients, have an agenda. Know what questions you must ask them on a regular basis in order to make certain that no values or needs fall through the cracks. Also, remember to always make it worth their while.

Here’s the beauty to this step. When you regularly survey all your clients, you not only stay abreast of any changes in their individual wants, needs, and values, but you also stay on top of any “corporate” changes in the buying climate. In other words, with the results of purposeful surveys, you have specific information that helps you cater to individual desires, and you have general information with which you can foresee general buying trends and adjust your sales efforts accordingly.

3. PLAY THE MARKET

What I mean by that is to become a buyer in your own market. If you sell anything, to remain ahead of your competition, you must understand what it’s like to be a consumer of your product. As a salesperson you can only adjust your selling efforts based on what you observe from the selling end of the transaction. But you can’t truly empathize with your buyers until you are one—otherwise your empathy is really just sympathy.

When I say become a buyer, I mean just that. I believe that every salesperson who is truly interested in understanding his buyers and remaining on the cutting edge of his industry must own at least one of the particular product he sells. I’m not suggesting that you buy your product every month and supplement your competitors’ wallets. (And obviously if you’re in the auto or home or any high-end product industry, this isn’t feasible.) But I am suggesting that to fully comprehend what a consumer of your particular product goes through in the process of buying and owning, you must have gone through the process at least once.

4. SURVEY YOURSELF ANNUALLY

Something I’ve practiced and preached for years now is what I call the “Annual Review with You.” And it’s geared to ensure that your needs and values in life are consistently met and upheld over the course of your selling career. In essence, it’s designed to ensure that your life doesn’t become stagnant in your pursuit of selling success. Dorothy Canfield Fisher once said, “If we would only give the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks’ vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our days.”

To make certain that your cutting-edge selling pursuits don’t cause your life to grow stale, begin conducting an annual review of your life’s procession. Personally, I find a place of solitude free from distraction and spend no less than eight hours answering the fol­lowing questions:

1. What am I passionate about that gives meaning to my life?

2. What do I value that gives me true satisfaction?

3. Am I missing anything in my life right now that is important to me?

4. Where do I want to be and what do I want to be doing in five, ten, and twenty years?

5. What gifts has God given me that I am perfecting? Which gifts am I not using effectively?

6. What would I be willing to die for?

7. What is it about my job that makes me feel trapped? How can I change that?

8. With regard to money, how much is enough? If I have more than enough, what purpose does the excess serve?

9. Am I living a balanced life? Which areas need more time or focus?

10. Where am I seeking inspiration, mentors, and working models to achieve greater significance?

11. What do I want to be remembered for? Am I currently known for those things?

12. What legacy do I want to leave my children? Am I leaving it?

“A man,” said Samuel Johnson, “loves to review his mind.” And while this is true, it’s not the purpose of conducting an annual review. The Annual Review with You is for the purpose of review­ing your heart, your soul. And when you do that on a yearly basis, you will ensure that nothing—not even sales success—will get in the way of the most important things in your life. And that’s vital because selling success and life satisfaction can and should go hand in hand. And when they do, your competitors don’t have a chance.

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