Imagine yourself wearing old, dirty, cracked glasses with an outdated prescription. You may think you see the world fine, but that’s because you’ve worn them for so long that you don’t even realize anything is amiss.

This is the predicament for many traditional sales professionals. From real estate and mortgage to insurance and technology, there’s been a gradual and consistent decline in commissions, renewals, bonuses and perks.

It’s like squinting a little more each day without realizing you’re almost blind.

But not all professional sales people are losing sight. Many have shed their old spectacles and replaced them with an updated pair that gives them a clear, unclouded perspective. As a result, they are flourishing in their sales careers—even to the point of realizing their vision of retiring from full-time sales with residual income.

We hope the following tips can will shed some light on their point of view and provide clarity on how to reinvent—and reinvigorate—your sales career in 2012 and beyond.

1. Survey your field.

With your shiny, new glasses on, take a good, hard look at your sales industry. While it’s important to stay optimistic (sales folks can be optimistic to a fault), it’s also vital to be realistic.

Let’s say you’ve been in health insurance sales for ten years. It’s likely that your income has taken a significant hit over the last few years—not to mention near annihilation of your renewals. So if things go as planned and the Healthcare Reform Act is implemented, how might that affect your income? Will health insurance sales still be a viable career? What needs to happen for change to occur? Is that realistic or wishful thinking?

How about real estate? What have the past six to twelve months been like? Is that likely to change or remain the same in the next six to twelve months? If the market stays relatively unchanged over the next two to three years (or longer), can you hang on?

These questions aren’t meant to be doom and gloom, but if the environment around you is changing and you can’t adapt, then it might be time to enhance your product/service offerings or move to a more viable sales field.

2. Appraise greener pastures.

Remember Richard Dreyfuss’ character in the 80s movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills? He played a millionaire who had made his fortune in … hangers. The seemingly bland, insignificant business of making and selling hangers brought him and his family great wealth and comfort.

This is not to suggest that you go out and start selling hangers. The point is that, more often than not, it’s the products and services that we take for granted that offer the most opportunity.

Take, for example, the small and mid-size business sector. As competition increases, smaller companies providing products and services to consumers need a lot of support in order to compete with bigger businesses that have more resources.

If you decide that it’s time to strengthen your sales portfolio—or even reinvent your sales career entirely—consider looking for products and services that provide specific, nondescript solutions to small and mid-sized businesses.

Providing behind-the-scenes solutions that resolve their day-to-day problems and consistently make their life easier is likely to increase your value to the marketplace while solidifying your sales career.

3. Look for structure and support.

As most sales professionals know, there are ample ups and downs in sales. And when you’re reinventing yourself in your sales career, sometimes it can seem like your “downs” are more prevalent than your “ups.” Especially in the beginning.

This is why it’s pivotal to have a strong support team in place that can help guide and encourage you every step of the way.

This does not mean a support team that’s cheering from the sidelines but doesn’t have skin in the game. The best way to reinvent yourself in your sales career is for your support team to:

✔ Be actively and successfully selling the product or service you’re looking to sell;

✔ Have an established track record selling the product or service and training others to do the same;

✔ Deliver training that is comprehensive, current and consistent so you learn how to be successful selling that product or service.

Too many sales organizations are being led by people who have very little relevant experience selling the products and services being promoted by the company. When a sales rep faces a challenge, they are often fed empty motivation that does little to solve their actual problem or advance them in their career.

To avoid this frustration, carefully evaluate support systems for how they walk the talk.

Auld Lang Syne (the good old times)

Many sales professionals are nostalgic for the bygone sales days when things were simpler (though never easy) and companies were more loyal to their reps. In fact, some are still looking at the present sales landscape through that outdated lens. They are hesitant to adjust their vision because it may mean a temporary period of blindness.

Unfortunately, when they stumble and fall, it takes them longer to recover.

The path to a more prosperous life and sales career may mean that you momentarily see things worse than you did before. But the journey of reinventing your sales career isn’t one you need—or should—navigate alone. If you have an accurate roadmap, it’s one that will bring you more clarity and confidence with each step.

So what does the New Year look like for you? Does your current sales landscape look vast with green opportunity ahead, or is it starting to look like the dust bowl? What will you do to ensure an impressive income and enjoyable journey in your sales career in 2012 and beyond?

However, times have changed and although millions of Americans still experience successful careers in commission sales, arriving at your destination takes more strategic planning than ever.

Utilizing our decades of personal experience and relationships with hundreds of sales professionals, we compiled the top ten potential roadblocks to avoid as you chart your course to sales retirement:

1. Bouncing Around From Company to Company

Finding a company you can work with long-term goes a long way towards building a solid and secure sales career.  We’ve all been guilty of following the “silver bullet” or thinking the “grass might be greener” somewhere else.

However, we’re quickly reminded there are no real shortcuts to long-term success.  Continually starting over with new companies and products can prevent us from ever achieving traction in our career.

Instead of 25 years of experience, we end up with one year of experience twenty-five times!

Recommendation: Take extra time searching for a company where you can “plant your feet” and grow with long-term.  Resist the temptation to chase after the “next best thing” — there’s no such thing as a perfect company.

2. When You Stop Selling – You Stop Getting Paid

A major draw to the insurance industry decades ago was the potential of working hard for 10, 20 or 30 years and being able to retire comfortably on your book of business.

That being said, any insurance agents reading this know this reality is as rare now as it was commonplace then.  As we have shifted to a “now” society, companies have responded by paying out more up-front commissions instead of paying long-term commissions on the agent’s book of business.

Of the companies that still pay renewal commissions, most stop paying them when we retire or leave the company to sell somewhere else, and may require long-term vesting schedules that effectively make you a “captive” agent.

Recommendation: Find a company that invests in your future by giving their sales agents a stake in the company, and commits to paying commissions on your book of business long after you stop selling or retire.

3. Feast or Famine Industry

Real estate is a great example of this…

When the real estate industry gets hot, it seems everyone that doesn’t have a real estate-related license goes out and gets one.  However, booms come and go, and we don’t know when the next one will arrive.

The challenges with putting all of our energy into selling in a temporary or cyclical industry is:

a) it lacks consistency

b) our income becomes dependent on something we can’t control – the fickle economy.

Unless we put an exceptional amount of money away during the good times (that can hold us over for months or years), our family could be put in financial jeopardy when the market cools off.

Recommendation: Rather than putting all our eggs in the feast-or-famine basket, diversify by adding another income generator from a different industry.  This positions you in a more consistent, dependable market if/when the “famine” hits.

4. Competitive Market

It’s easy to get drawn into a “hot” industry that like a magnet, attracts many sales professionals and companies. Unfortunately, the market suddenly becomes very competitive and often saturates quickly.

Whether you’re selling real estate, advertising, insurance or credit card processing, the more competitive the market is, the more difficult it can be to add and retain customers.

Recommendation: If you can find a unique product or service in an emerging niche market with less competition, you gain an ability to build a large client base in less time and make yourself invaluable to your clients long-term.

5. Living Above Our Means

Many of us have seasons in our business where we experience momentum and it feels like times will always be good.  During these intervals, it’s easy to increase our spending and “upgrade” our lifestyles…

Then reality hits …

When momentum and sales slow, it tends to put more pressure on our day-to-day meetings and we run the risk of appearing desperate to our prospects.

Recommendation: When we reach our goals, we should reward ourselves, but within reason.  Even when your sales career is on fire, garner the self-discipline to spend within your means.  This helps position us for a healthy and secure sales career.

6. “Ground Floor Opportunities”

Although we hear of the few startups that make it big, the reality is our sales career is more likely to outlive most of them.

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), half of new businesses close their doors within 5 years—and the great majority don’t make it to their 10^th birthday.

There are few things more devastating than putting heart and soul into building a book of business only to have the company fold.

Recommendation: Reduce your risk and get the odds working in your favor by making sure any company you sell for passes the “10 year rule“, meaning they’ve been in business at least 10 years.

7. Severe Regulation

A certain amount of regulation is necessary in many industries.  However, some tend to be regulated more than others.  In these industries our career can be impacted overnight by a stroke of a pen.

Passing new legislation in highly regulated industries can frequently add additional and burdensome procedures, paperwork or wipe out an entire industry as we know it.  Recent examples of extreme changes happening quickly are in the mortgage and health insurance industries.

Recommendation: When possible, choose an industry that historically is less likely to be affected by growing regulation that could be burdensome for conducting business.

8. Recession Weakness

After experiencing the Great Recession of the late 2000’s, it’s a good time to evaluate the strength of major industries.

Aside from obvious industries hit hardest like real estate, advertising and health insurance, a December 2010 USA Today article reported that households holding life insurance policies hit the lowest number in 50 years.

Recommendation: Since the economy runs in cycles, when designing your career path, look for industries that have a better chance of weathering a recession gracefully.  Start by looking for companies that have emerged from the last 3 years with “flying colors.”

9. Assigned Territory

Working in a territory rarely ends well.   After building up your book of business for many months or years, company management may decide to carve up, change or take away your territory all together.

Sometimes this comes along with a “promotion” to a manager position, putting more of a ceiling on your income than you had before.

Recommendation: When possible, avoid companies that restrict you to a territory.  The ideal situation is not only having the freedom to cultivate new business anywhere, but also the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, such as your spouse being transferred to a different city or state.

10. Settling for Leads, Draw or Base

At some point in our careers, we might feel beat up, tired or demoralized and may seek the comfort of a company doing the prospecting for us (leads).  We also may feel we’ve earned the right to receive compensation whether or not we sell anything.

We might not realize it at the time, but this is often a death sentence for reaching the financial security and retirement we dreamed of.

By taking easy money, leads or “benefits” now, we are, in turn, robbing our future retirement.  These perks are set up for the company to benefit long-term, not us.

Recommendation: If you consider yourself a true independent sales professional who wants to win in the end, do everything you can to stay in a straight commission environment.  This is where you generate your own leads, allowing for a true unlimited income situation.

There never has been, and likely never will be, a perfect company to work for.  However, by limiting these potential roadblocks, you can better position yourself for a promising sales future and secure retirement.

So what about you? Have you experienced any of these roadblocks in your career?

If so, what did you do—or plan to do—in order to work around them?

Like many in her industry, she’s being told that, due to health care reform, her role as a self-employed independent insurance agent is about to become obsolete.

Instead of running for the hills like some independent agents, she’s staying the course, but keeping her options open.

In addition to offering more high-deductible health insurance plans to her small business clients, she also made the decision to diversify her income channels. She purchased a property for investment purposes and plans to add on casualty insurance for back up business.

Kim Stanley’s the same way. As a veteran Jacksonville Beach health insurance agent, she’s seen the ups and downs of commission-payouts over the years—but this time, it’s different. She’s been getting the “Dear Jane” notices since May about the commission cuts.

While Kim is still passionate about health insurance, instead of it being 70 percent of her focus, she’s reallocating her portfolio of services to include financial and retirement planning in anticipation of the financial hit.

Both of these sales professionals understand that the only thing that is constant is change; they are taking initiative to protect themselves financially instead of waiting on the sidelines to see what will happen.

Whether you want it to or not, the economy is going to change. Politics will change. Commission structures and payouts will change. Technology will change. YOU will change.

But while change is automatic, progress is not.

To make progress, you’ve got to look at your life in a different way. Doing so can help you make proactive changes that move you forward in life.

And this doesn’t relate to just health insurance agents … It’s true that commission cuts to health insurance agents are getting most of the publicity, but the reality is that cuts in commission payouts are affecting every sales industry.

What’s happening to health insurance agents can just as easily happen, (and in many cases is already happening), to someone selling mortgages, software, medical technology, annuities, auto and life insurance, merchant services—even real-estate.

Regardless of the 1099 commission sales career you’re in, it’s always critical to put Plan B’s in place.

The “flat fee” compensation option initiated by the Affordable Care Act is a good example of this…

This flat fee concept is something that gravely concerns commission-based agents.

How it works is that instead of paying commissions on policies sold, brokers are paid a flat fee for each individual they help enroll (In Utah, for example, it’s $37 per month).

Even the executive vice president and CEO of the National Association of Health Underwriters, Janet Trautwein, worries that although the agent would still get paid for doing something, it will be difficult for them to actually make a living with a flat fee structure.

And that may very well be the case if that’s the only compensation structure an agent relies on…

Take the insurance agent in Idaho who suffered an income drop of 20 percent when insurers began paying flat fees a few years back.

That would have been devastating for most agents. Fortunately, he developed a different outlook. He not only started selling more flat fee policies to a vastly underserved niche (small businesses), he also proactively inquired about what their other needs were. This enabled him to expand his portfolio with services that directly met those needs.

So in the spirit of thinking more ambitiously, and embracing a take-charge attitude, let’s examine 4 other options to protect you financially and keep you progressing—regardless of the changing environment.

• Modify Your Niche – like Debbie, Kim, and countless others, adjusting not just what you sell, but who you sell to, even if it’s on a part-time basis, can make up for lost commission income—sometimes, even replacing the full-time commissions you were used to.

• Cash Flow, Cash Flow, Cash Flow – Commissions are great, but cash flow income is more sustainable—especially in a tough economy where everyone is looking to cut costs any way they can. But being able to generate both? Now that’s a strategy that will not only lead to progress, but will allow you to get paid what you’re worth. There are thousands of smart, savvy sales professionals that have been able to structure their compensation this way. You should too if you want to protect your financial present and future.

• Daily-Use Products and Services – Even though health insurance can offer life-saving value to clients, the reality is that it is not meant to be used on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. If an individual or small business employee were using their health insurance frequently, their premiums would go up. Most people know this and it leaves a bitter taste in their mouth. Therefore, having a service or product to offer that can be used every single day without any negative financial impact will not only open doors, but it’ll retain clients.

• Lower Cost Products and Services – Especially in today’s economy, it’s all about bang for the buck. People want to pay less, but get more. Adding products and services to your portfolio of offerings that impress clients on a value and price level is the most effective way to secure and enhance your income.

The time is ripe to embrace these inevitable cuts and changes in commission payouts. As a 1099 independent sales professional, your skill-set is second-to-none. There is absolutely no reason why impending cuts to commissions should slow you down. Just the opposite, in fact. It opens up the opportunity for you to transform your sales career so that regardless of what is happening in the economy, your revenue streams are protected.

*The people mentioned in this blog post came from the following articles:
Gold, Jenny. Health Insurance Brokers Fight For Their Future. Kaiser Health News, 2010

Cox, Jeremy. Health Insurance Agents Face Measure to Cut 2011 Costs. The Florida Times-Union, 2010

The Stockdale Paradox is a term coined by author Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great. It essentially goes like this:

“You must retain faith that, in the end, you will prevail, but at the same time, you must confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.”

The brutal reality is that the real estate slump is not going to get better anytime soon.

More impending layoffs, high unemployment rates, over 100,000 foreclosures expected in January alone, overbuilding over the past five years, declining home values, and tightening mortgage lending standards all point to some rough years ahead.

And there’s no question real estate agents are feeling the strain…

Lawrence Yun, a top economist with the National Association of Realtors, revealed the gross commissions for real estate agents are down 50 percent from their peak.

Not only is the real estate industry functioning with half the amount of money it did back in 2006, but the number of active real estate agents has only dropped by about 25 percent…

Between 2003 and 2007 when housing prices were skyrocketing, everyone and their mother went out to get their real estate license. Even though most fell out of the game, this gluttony of real estate agents affects commission even today.

To put this into perspective, let’s say there was $100 dollars of commission for every 100 agents at the peak. Now, there’s only $50 dollars for every 75 agents.

Interestingly, the rates of commissions paid to agents actually crept up for the fourth year in a row to an average of 5.29 percent of the sales price, according to RealTrends’ annual survey of the 500 largest brokerages.

But this means that even though real estate agents are actually working and charging more, they are still earning less.

With homes taking ten to twelve months, on average, to sell, increased expenses for web sites, home staging, and marketing, and falling home prices, the majority of real estate agents are struggling to generate enough income just to get by.

Money Out Of Mayhem

But, as the first part of the Stockdale Paradox teaches, things will eventually get better.

The question, however, is not if this present doom and gloom real estate reality will come to an end … it’s whether you can hang-on financially in the meantime.

If the housing crisis has taught anything, it’s that just relying on one-time only commission payouts to generate income is not the soundest strategy.

There’s no question that when the economy is strong, real estate commissions can be a nice payday and a handsome living.

But to secure yourself financially in any economic climate, it’s important to have more than one income source to tap in to.

Ward Johnson, a 15-year veteran of real estate sales, offers a perfect example of this.

“When the market was hot, I had more leads coming in than I knew what to do with. My office looked like a train wreck. I had boxes of business cards, sticky notes, names and numbers scribbled on cocktail napkins … it was mayhem!” laughs Ward, “But lucrative mayhem! I just thought I was disorganized and messy—which my wife has accused me of many times! Turns out, most of the agents in my office were often the same way.”

Back in 2005 Ward was so busy he barely had time to eat. He rushed from showing to showing, and open house to open house. He was making a killing financially, but the craziness was taking its toll.

Around that time Ward started looking at contact managers to help him better manage his leads and schedule. He wasn’t very savvy on the computer so he wanted something simple and user-friendly, but that would organize all his clients and prospects.

“I found one that really worked for me and it made a big difference. I was working less, earning more and building better relationships with my clients.”

Plus, the cherry on top was that the company that developed the customer relationship manager (CRM) software relied on “compensated referrals” for most of their marketing. So when Wade introduced the CRM to his fellow colleagues and they decided to take advantage of it for their own business, Wade was not only paid a small commission, but an ongoing renewal payout as well.

“I didn’t think much of it, actually,” says Wade. “It just really made a difference in how I was managing my business and it made sense to share that resource. The fact that they compensate me is wonderful, but I would have talked it up anyway. But I’ll be honest … that extra income has really helped me out during this real estate slump.”

Protecting Profits While Protecting Clients

Another pro-active agent, Jean Wellington, found inspiration for a secondary income stream from a devastating situation faced by one of her long-time clients. The clients, a married couple with two kids, were both in professional industries and had excellent credit scores. So it came as a terrible shock when they went to the bank for loan approval to build their dream home and it showed they were $375,000 in debt.

But it was not debt they had accrued. Someone had stolen their identities and had a hay day opening up accounts and racking up tremendous debt all across the US, Canada, and Mexico.

Not only did they have to delay building their dream home, but it took more than five years, time away from work, and a lot of anguish to recover their identity, and credit score. It also cost them dearly. Between attorneys’ fees and other out-of-pocket expenses, they spent over $100,000 to get their financial life back in order.

To raise awareness, Jean started talking to all her past and present clients about identity theft. More and more stories came out of the woodwork from clients and friends about their experience as an identity theft victim and the grief it caused.

What frustrated Jean is that she didn’t know what advice or solution to offer that would help. So, she started investigating.

After thoroughly evaluating all the identity theft protection services available, she decided on one that she felt was most comprehensive and that she’d feel confident offering to her real estate clients.

Selling this additional benefit strengthened her relationships with her clients because it validated that she wasn’t just concerned about a real estate transaction … She wanted to make sure her clients were protected long after they sold or purchased a home with her.

What both agents demonstrate is that opportunities are available to:

a) offer helpful resources, information and value to past, present, and future clients and

b) solidify and enhance your revenue in any economic climate

It’s important to take initiative by evaluating what would work for you, your clients and the area in which you live, and then … take action.

What are some other needs your clients may have related to buying and selling a home?

What are other real estate agents are doing to augment their income in the short and long term?

Let’s face it. Most independent sales professionals are like sailboats without a rudder, just going where the tides take them. When the sales seas were calmer and the winds of compensation were more predictable, there didn’t seem to be any real danger to this blowin’-in-the-wind strategy.

Unfortunately, over the past few years, the sales seas have gotten rougher with commission-cutting cyclones and rogue rate-cutting waves threatening to capsize directionless sailboats for good. Now, most 1099 commission-based producers have put their life jackets on.

But the reality is, all you need to reach a tropical paradise safely is a working rudder and a destination.

“If you have a brain in your head and feet in your shoes,
you can steer yourself in any direction you choose.”
Dr. Seuss

Whether you choose to recognize it or not, the condition of your life at this moment—where you are, and who you are—is because of the daily, weekly, monthly choices and decisions you’ve made over the years.

YOU are responsible for your own success. You either make a plan for what you want or you don’t; if you want to be successful in any endeavor, be it your sales career or life in general, you must take complete ownership of making a plan and setting goals to achieve it.

If you want the coming decade to be exponentially more prosperous than the last, follow these 5 simple steps to make a plan that will keep you on the right course.

1. Climb the hill, not Everest.
   One of the reasons most independent sales people would rather shave their head than set goals is because they simply don’t want to experience more failing. An old adage in sales is that you fail forward—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a painful process.Their thinking is often, “I get enough rejection on a daily basis just doing my job … why would I want to set myself up to add to that feeling of failure?”And when they have set goals, most often, they didn’t reach them, and it stunk.

   But in most cases, the goals they set were pretty darn lofty. They aimed at a few Mt. Everest-sized goals, felt confident, and then a few months later, they weren’t even at base camp.

   An essential “secret” to goal-setting, especially if the thought of doing so leaves a knot in your stomach, is to start by selecting bite-sized goals to reach.

   For example … start off by determining just four goals related to your sales career that you’d like to accomplish in the next six months.

   Instead of “I want to be financially free in the next six months,” (a Mt. Everest), try “I want to find a company I can work with part-time that will allow me to generate renewal income that will supplement my commission payouts,” (Base Camp).

2. Get it in writing.
   If you don’t put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and put your goals in writing, you’re wasting your time.Unwritten goals that remain in your head lead to vagueness, misdirection, and frustration.When you create something that you can touch and see, you add power and momentum to it.You are the architect of your life. Even the most imaginative and brilliant of architects must eventually put their mental plans to paper in order to make it a physical reality.

   Here is a helpful worksheet to help you plan your work and work your plan.

3. Think short-term.
   As the saying goes, “Goals are dreams with deadlines.”But until goal-setting and goal-achieving becomes a lifestyle habit, there’s no sense in setting goals too far into the future. That just opens up the doorway for excuses to postpone action.

   Keep your goals in 3-month and 6-month time-frames and make them simple and realistic enough to be reached within that time-frame.

   Once your goal is reached, you can either cross it off and say, “Yes! I did it!” Or, you can build upon it by adding a few more steps to be completed in another three to six months.

4. And … Action!
   Once you’ve determined your four goals that can be achieved in three to six months and have written them down, the next thing to do is to define three simple action steps that will get you closer to its actualization.In his best-selling book, The 4-Hour Workweek, author Tim Ferris offers this guidance:“Set actions—simple, well-defined actions—for now, tomorrow (complete before 11 A.M.) and the day after (again completed before 11 A.M.) … If the next step is some form of research, get in touch with someone who knows the answer instead of spending too much time in books or online, which can turn into paralysis by analysis … Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!”

   Tragically, an unbelievable number of people who set goals do so and then never look at them again. Don’t let that be you.

   Instead of just writing down your goals, deadlines and action steps, make sure you review them every single day. And, at the end of each day, write down what actions you did take that day to progress you toward achieving your goal. If you did little to nothing related to reaching one of your four goals, man-up, swallow the bitter pill, and reposition your rudder to get back on course.

   Remember … It’s never too late to start. It’s always too late to wait.

5. Flock with the right birds
   If someone isn’t making you stronger, they are making you weaker. Period.Therefore, it is imperative to surround yourself with people and events that help you fulfill your objectives, teach you what you need to know, and enable you to think and act like a top producer.Motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, is famous for saying that “you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

   If the five people you surround yourself with the most have a negative philosophy, are consistently complaining, living in the past, and blaming others for their difficulties, then chances are slim to none that you’ll reach your goals.

   Why? Because it’s incredibly difficult to see what’s possible, raise your standards, and make a compelling vision for your future when you’re not interacting with others who want to progress in life too.

   When we see others closing 20 sales at the end of the month, getting bonuses, offering new services, or earning higher compensation, we see the possibility that exists and can build upon that.

   This is why it is so important to become acutely aware of who you surround yourself with. What destination are they headed for? Is that where you want to be headed? Are they people who live the kinds of lives you aspire to live?

At the end of the day, the simple truth is that you are either going for your goals or giving up on your goals. There is no in-between.

So what about you?
Do you have a compelling vision for what you really want?
Do you have strong enough reasons to follow through when the going gets tough?
Are you willing to review your goals every single day?
Are you willing to raise your standards and do little things each day that will get you victoriously to your goal?