Belief Barriers Breather

There’s often a thundering rush to promote all things Growth this time of year.

The traditional SKO broadcasts a challenging (yet ideally, achievable) target for what more business shall be written during the coming twelve months over and above last year.

I have seen, literally, over a hundred of these. In-person and now over live video.

The expectations are often set from a global level.

And those alone can be pretty daunting.

So imagine how salespeople can react when transposing the overall ‘extra’ onto their personal, individual quota.

Think back to sessions of this type you’ve seen.

How many of the assembled sellers seem fired up, relishing the task? And how many, more circumspect, from either overwhelming fear or downright dismissal of perceived ludicrous numbers?

There’s sometimes quite the scale here for people to perch along.

If you are delivering this type of exhortation, then after the gasps, it can pay to hold a moment of reflection.

There’s a concept around Belief Barriers.

Related to milestones already reached. Yardsticks hit. Benchmarks surpassed.

The classic feature numbers.

An amount of revenue, volume or profit reached for instance. Accumulated or by period. A breakdown by market or product, team or person.

The ‘billionth-dollar’ fake greenback trinket on display. The first million-dollar quarter, month, deal.

They can keep getting more specific too as you drill down into the numbers.

A certain tally of customers or users now exceeded. Cycle time reductions. Funnel ratio improvements.

Even internal factors, such as swelling employee numbers, branch openings or a treasured market penetration.

Your message in this sense should be, ‘if you think this year is scary, consider where we’ve already come from….’

It all the better considering these forums for 2022 are probably now more over video, then it only needs a single visual alongside. Shining a solitary amount or label.

And in just those couple of minutes you can start to turn any doubters into believers.