It looks like a silly question, but it isn’t, at all.

How many times did you procrastinate some " unpleasant " sales tasks (prospecting , cold phone calls, a visit to a difficult client ) postponing them in favor of reviewing the material of the training already carried out, putting in order some papers, sending a few emails, checking that presentation?

How many times have you said that the best day to go selling will be next Wednesday, next Friday, or even next week?

Some salespersons waste time, others waste efforts, others waste both of them, in an attempt to move away from unpleasant tasks. This often surfaces during my sales training seminars .

In short psychology terms, procrastination is often cited as a phenomenon to lower the level of anxiety that the individual correlates to a task deemed uninteresting, unpleasant or even annoying.

Selling is one of the most difficult jobs over there and, if done without a true love and pleasure, could be very stress inducing.

At the end, salespeople are among those professional who collect the highest number of denials performing their job.

Activities related to the sales process are often difficult and, from times to times, many reps are bothered by some of the actions necessary to successfully accomplish the process.

There are those who do not like cold calls, those who dislike contacts with new customers , some others hate the preparation of proposals and presentations, or maybe following up, and so on.

However, postponing a task is a source of additional stress and feeling of being guilt, generates self-esteem and performance lowering, even sales crisis ( if putting off behavior is continuously repeated).

While a slight degree of procrastination is common for the majority of individuals, , procrastination itself becomes a major problem if it prevents the normal course of work activities. If one reaches chronic levels, that may even be the indicator of an underlying psychological disorder.

This is an issue that usually is not addressed in traditional sales training seminars however, is sometimes responsible of sales results definitely well below average.

Procrastination causes widely vary, but generally are linked to anxious behaviours, low self-esteem, and self-sabotaging attitudes.

On the other side, sometimes procrastinating comes simply from a lack of adequate priorities management, a lack which can lead to overestimate the importance of certain tasks and underestimating others which, consequently, are postponed.

Especially in sales activities, which require not only a lot of energy but also many tasks rolled out in certain sequences, the phenomenon of procrastination is able to quickly lowering performance.

Furthermore, putting off too many tasks, can therefore leads to immediately burning out some spare time initially planned for emergencies.

In all cases in which a rep recognizes to be a procrastinator, there is a simple rule to apply, which can give excellent results.

This rule provides that, as soon as one becomes aware of his resistance to tackle a task, should tackle it immediately, putting aside any fear or hesitation. In other words, " if you do not feel comfortable in doing something , that's the time to do it !"

This simple yet effective rule shows how to overcome that self-sabotaging attitudes which inevitably are reflected in the sales results, and leads to understand that the best day to go selling is today!

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