Once upon a time, there were three people: Busy, Grinding, and Hustling.

Every day, Busy, Grinding, and Hustling woke, cranked their phones on, scrolled their socials, jammed through their email, rolled through their slack, and hit the ground running.

Busy, Grinding, and Hustling wouldn’t stop for anything.

Then, a dark wave broke across the land. A pandemic paralyzed Busy, Grinding, and Hustling. They still woke every day to a tsunami of info, but it was news about a virus and an economic crisis. Busy, Grinding, and Hustling came to a screeching halt.

But soon (okay, maybe not soon enough), the darkness lifted, the economy started its engine again, warming at first to a slow purr and then suddenly, to a roar.

Busy, Grinding, and Hustling thought: I got my groove back.

But something happened.

This time, when Busy, Grinding, and Hustling hit the ground running with their same old habits, the velocity at which they normally ran met with resistance. The world was no longer the same; its axis had shifted. Busy, Grinding, and Hustling were thrown off balance because they simply thought they could conquer the new world with the same old ways. They never realized that being merely busy, grinding, and hustling in a world that had radically changed, only meant they were busily grinding and hustling themselves out of steam. Busy, Grinding, and Hustling became Burned Out, Exhausted, and Spent.

The story of Busy, Grinding, and Hustling is our collective story, it’s about all of us. Right now, “The Big Quit” is rippling across the world as people leave their jobs in epic numbers. It’s just one cause and effect that demonstrates the velocity of change and how radically different the world is now.

Question: Are your sales habits the same old habits you used pre-pandemic? Are you busy, grinding, and hustling again with no thought to how much our world has changed? In our industry, the most over-used word in our business lexicon is the word busy. It’s how we define our everyday “success.” But merely being busy isn’t enough anymore, and grinding and hustling just isn’t smart enough to face the challenges nor explore the opportunities we face today.

Covid ushered in “a mass migration to digital.” B2B buyers (over 70% of them) now consider remote selling and digital self-serve tools more effective than in-person interaction (McKinsey). And digital is just one example of many changes. Buyers want more problem-solving, less shilling. Buyers are more conscientious, more purpose-aware, they want you to know and understand their business and they want solutions that solve problems. The customer has changed.

In James Clear’s Atomic Habits, he writes, “The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside of habits is that you get used to doing things a certain way and stop paying attention to errors … You can’t repeat the same things blindly and expect to become exceptional.”

It’s not that being busy, grinding, and hustling are wrong, it’s that we tend to over-rely on those traits alone, without thinking through our WHY.

“Those who only know what they do, work harder. Those who know WHY they do what they do, work smarter.” - Simon Sinek

Have you changed the way you approach the world? Or are you still busy, grinding, and hustling?

Exercise: Make a list of the old sales habits that once made you successful. What were they? Collecting leads from tradeshows? After-hours networking? Chamber of Commerce luncheons? What habits did you use to land new business? Grow existing business? And what habits did you use to interact with your customers? What was a day in your life like pre-pandemic? What was your week like? One a single page, make two columns. On the left, list the old habits you used to become successful and then cross off those that are now less effective. On the right side, list the new habits you feel you’ll need to grow into. Share your list with a colleague and think through the ways in which your world has changed.

Here are some additional blog resources to help you manage your team: