Action Oriented Sales: 5 Strategies to Unleash a Growth Mindset

Are you repeatedly missing sales opportunities and losing prospects to action-oriented sales teams?

Or, as a motivated salesperson, do you struggle with realizing your monthly sales targets?

If you fall into these categories, consider an action-oriented sales approach.

Action-oriented sales is crucial if you want to stay on top of opportunities and constantly convert prospects to customers in your business.

How do you make this transition and set yourself toward adopting a growth mindset?

Let’s start with some clarification.

What is an Action-Oriented Mindset in Sales?

An action-oriented mindset is consistently practicing time management and decision-making skills combined with appropriate activities to realize sales goals.

This sales mindset ensures that every salesperson addresses the customer’s needs at every step along the sales journey.

Action-oriented sales teams are more successful because they are more proactive, prepared, and practical.

5 Strategies & Benefits of an Action-Oriented Mindset in Sales

Do you want to increase the probability of closing sales for each new prospect?

Do you want to build confidence and enhance your objection handling skills, courage, and passion for your business?

Developing an action-oriented mindset is one way to make it happen faster.

Strategy #1: Start Before You’re Ready

In preparation for the best outcome, an action-oriented mindset requires you to dig the well before you’re ready. For example, start prospecting before you have answers to every question your prospect may ask.

In other words, devise your approach to overcoming obstacles in the sales process, rather than spending all your time up front figuring out the perfect solution.

Basically, learn by doing.

Some other examples of this approach can include:

• Try to close the sale before you build a strong relationship (test close).
• Figure out your value propositions by asking prospects what matters to them.
• Experience objections to determine what your best response might be.
• Skip out on internal meetings and instead carve out time to prospect.

Sound daring? They are, but there are some benefits to this action-based approach.

Benefit: Develop Your Risk-Taking Ability

You’ll learn valuable strategies through experience and taking action, rather than spending all of your time trying to figure out what to do.

You and your team will approach more leads, make more sales calls, and generate more proposals, rather than spending inordinate amounts of time on research and perfecting your approach.

Strategy #2: Break It Down

Here’s the key.

An action-oriented sales mindset simplifies goals into bite-sized steps to act on daily. 

Once objectives are clear enough, then it’s time to take action.

After all, sales requires consistent action. There’s no room for delays or accountability issues. 

This strategy teaches new sales associates how to be proactive and remain in the moment during sales conversations. It inspires them to act with confidence and fosters the development of their own action-oriented mindset.

Benefit: Confidence Feeds Confidence

The compelling reason to use this strategy is to build and boost your confidence in your skillset and your ability to navigate and manage different situations.

Let’s be honest, selling can be unpredictable.

For example, suppose your buyer makes an offer during your sales presentation. With an action-oriented sales mindset, you’ll know how to respond, what to say, and whether to accept or counter the offer.

When your confidence is high, you’re more courageous and willing to take on more responsibility. And, (bonus!) your prospects view you as more trustworthy.

Strategy #3: Power Through

Sales is a numbers game. You win some, you lose some.

The best strategy to use then is to proactively learn to keep your chin up and power through slow times, failures, setbacks, and unfamiliar circumstances.

Remember what Zig Ziglar said:

For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.

Sales motivation activities can be a great means to power through slower periods and can serve to engage yourself and your team positively.

Some examples include:

• Brainstorm with your sales team to share and develop new ideas.
• Reward yourself or your team for daily efforts (rather than just wins).
• Provide rewards and additional compensation for your team for their hard work.
• Encourage and recognize exceptional talent in front of the sales team.

Benefit: Compounded Learning

As you (and your sales team) power through successes, setbacks, and failures, your team will become unstoppable.

It’s through these experiences that you will also improve employee engagement and team comradery.

With action orientation, the team will learn how to handle unexpected situations, quickly differentiating between what works and doesn’t work with courage and confidence.

Strategy #4: Expect Roadblocks

One of the many measures of an action-oriented mindset is expecting roadblocks and setbacks.

Inexperienced and unseasoned salespeople make the mistake of reacting to events, rather than being proactive and expecting them.

This behavior can result in lost deals.

Instead, by taking a proactive approach your sales team can thrive and learn how to achieve higher levels of success.

Expect objections, provide overwhelming value, and outwork the competition with action-driven goals.

Benefit: Builds Objection Handling Skills

When you expect objections, you prepare yourself for the inevitable.

You’ll build valuable skills to overcome common sales objections with enough repetition and practice. 

Moreover, you’ll always be quick to respond with the right solutions to challenges your buyers present.

Strategy #5: Plan Ahead (But Don’t Over Plan)

Action-oriented sales guided by a playbook or sales plan will outperform the competition every time.

When planning, retain your action-oriented approach. Avoid getting into the weeds with elaborate, detail-bloated plans.

Instead, strive to spend less time planning and more time executing your plans so you can learn quickly from mistakes and improve on your outcomes.

Benefit: Develop Vision & Foster Motivation

The most exciting benefit of planning is that it provides a clear vision and builds the anticipation of everyone on your team.

Seeing what the next steps are and the impact your vision will have on your business makes it easy for you and every team member to be passionate and motivated about it.

Having a vision encourages team creativity, limits negative social consciousness, and incentivizes individual action.

Engage Your Action-Oriented Mindset

Developing an action-oriented mindset takes some effort, particularly if you are a highly detail-oriented person by nature.

As you take full advantage of every opportunity in your day-to-day activities, you and your team will become more capable of addressing any sales objections or obstacles head-on.

With your action-oriented mindset engaged, you’ll experience unprecedented sales and personal growth!

© Shawn Casemore 2022. All Rights Reserved.