Will This Year's Sales Assumptions Work in 2009?

Resolution making can be an easy-to-delay challenge. After January 1, the world keeps moving and we must move with it--resolution-ready or not! But so much changed in 2008 that I felt a resolution or two might help stabilize an otherwise shaky sales horizon. So I formulated my 2009 sales resolutions by combining them into two Janusian groups (owing its name to the Roman god of gates and doors, Janus, whose vigil required him to look in two directions):

Things to continue doing
Things to do differently

Things to start doing
Things to stop doing

Before January’s calendar rolls into double-digit days, I wanted to share my list for my clients and other enterprises:

Things to continue doing (for some people, after 2008, this might be the shortest of the four lists!):

1. Setting strategic goals that push the envelope (sometimes called BHAG’s—Big Hairy Audacious Goals).
2. Leveraging social media for marketing and sales.

Things to do differently:

1. Develop not just many social media connections, but those that provide the highest value to enterprises: innovation, revenue achievement, and knowledge for process best practices.
2. Reorganize marketing and selling processes to address redistribution of information power and changes in how people buy.
3. Trust, but be more skeptical. As author David Berreby said, when writing about trust in the New York Times(March 30, 2008), Stanley Milgram’s famed electric shock experiments show “in difficult situations, when (people) wrestle with the line between trust and skepticism, trust often wins. Much of the time, that’s a good thing.” The aftermath of Bernie Madoff’s scheme suggests differently.

Things to start doing:

1. Ask a teenager for ongoing, in-depth tutorials about how to use Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, and other social media tools (if you haven’t already done so).
2. Seek opinions from people, books and blogs that are controversial or even disagreeable.

Things to stop doing:

1. Flogging the sales force for more productivity and more revenue output without providing better tools, training, or process improvements.
2. Delaying strategy decision making “until we know what the economy is going to do.” The forces in world keep moving. Could the risks of indecision be greater than the risks from a wrong decision?

What’s on your list?