The Sales Experiment

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TED, Tucking Kids in, and Time Management

While I’m under no illusion that folks are paying close attention to this blog and my commitment to read or listen to content everyday, act on it, and write about it, I’m personally aware that I made the commitment.

I’ve found it more difficult than first imagined to make good on the writing portion of this commitment. Perhaps I should save the previous day’s activity for the next day’s writing so I can knock it out first thing in the morning.

Right now, I’m planning for a speaking engagement (the result of a commitment earlier in this Dan Miller Challenge process) and, quite frankly, it’s kicking my butt. I’ve had to prioritize that preparation because there will be very real, flesh and bone people for whom I hope to create true value. Prayers appreciated.

I don’t want to get too far afield from this challenge to keeping record on this site. This post is more self-serving than I’d like it to be, but maybe you can find a nugget or two.

TED Talks

In an effort to get a feel for well-done speeches, I power listened to and watched TED talks on YouTube all day on Saturday (two days ago). I was working on home projects, letting the YouTube channel go all day. Great stuff, although I think there’s an over-gravitas-ness of the talks at times. I’m not one to criticize, but a joke or a little levity here and there would be nice.

Tucking My Children In

Yesterday, I listened to a sermon about manhood – what it means to be a man, from a biblical worldview. Matt Chandler of Village Church in Dallas, TX encouraged men that regardless of how worn out, tired, or ‘over it’ we get, that comfort is always our enemy. Getting home from work and never moving butt from couch is a sure way to slowly bring a family into dysfunction.

Not only that, but a man is called to make sure he takes time with his children and wife, to tuck them in, to sit and ask them about their day and pray or sing with them. So… I made sure to take over tucking in duties. Even if we share it, I want to be there for my daughter and my boys, every night to give them hugs and sing them a song if they want it and to dig a bit into their little hearts.

Time Management

On the way to work, I caught a couple Ben Settle Antipreneur podcasts on time management. One of the key takeaways: pay yourself first as it relates to time. So today, I did. I worked on my upcoming talk for the first two hours before the day went haywire with other demands.  It helped set the day up to be much more productive.

In Conclusion…

Even if you’re super-busy, try to find crevices of time where you can feed your mind, heart, and spirit with quality content. Pull away early in the morning. Take a walk and listen to something. Stop for 15 minutes and read a book.

Just a suggestion.

Until tomorrow…

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Have a Focused Purpose

Blogging is a funny thing. Those of us who do it relate well to each other. It’s hard to talk about it to someone who doesn’t without hedging and making a few self-deprecating snarky remarks.

I’m good at that because I sell insurance for a living, and since insurance has been a second career, I had to spend a little time getting over similar hedging and self-deprecating snarky remarks.

Both blogging and insurance sales are supremely honorable pursuits. But they are made most honorable when they have a purpose.

Blogging without a purpose is public journaling (still a small purpose, but then you have to be super witty or engaging or kind of a train wreck to be worth reading – or a family member).

Selling insurance without a purpose outside of straight-up raking in the cash can become smarmy and sleazy (although if one is going to be in sales, then making money isn’t a bad motivation at all – it just can’t be the only motivation.)

Having a purpose mitigates self-deprecation. It gives some meat and bones to what we do as either salespersons or bloggers (or both).

Having a Purpose

I’m walking through Jeff Goins’ ‘Intentional Blogging Challenge’ at the moment (to join up, check out the Facebook page he set up for the 15 day challenge).

Day 2’s challenge was all about giving your blog some focus. Identify a subject, theme, and objective for your blog.

So I considered those three items for this particular website. It can easily fall into a little business journaling exercise (a worthy thing, indeed, but not entirely useful for anybody else).

Here were my responses:

  • SUBJECT: Sales success
  • THEME: Learning how to find your ‘sales voice’ – especially for those who came to sales or a marketing career as a second career after slightly more romantic pursuits like ministry or some other liberal arts career didn’t pan out.
  • OBJECTIVE: To find and clarify my own sales voice while developing coaching tools and methods to help other individuals and organizations do the same thing.

I put myself through this exercise for my day job:

  • SUBJECT: Commercial insurance sales
  • THEME: Helping my clients protect their nonprofit visions
  • OBJECTIVE: To be a consultative partner with my clients, helping them to identify the operations, people, and assets that are vital to moving their nonprofit’s mission forward, matching appropriate insurance tools to protect those three things.

I spent some time today filtering newer opportunities as I want to work with people who have a vision (mostly nonprofits) and that value having a mission and being committed to caring enough about the people they serve to be wise about protection.

Having a Focus Filters Opportunities and Gives Us an Editorial Perspective

I love the exercise in focus because it helps filter opportunities. We can’t do everything for everybody and maintain effectiveness over the long haul. Even in our writing, the more laser-focused we are, the more easily we can identify topics to write about (as contradictory as that seems).

In sales, the more laser-focused we are, the more expertise we develop and the deeper we can dive into our chosen niche.

What’s Your Focus? 

I won’t bore you with listing the reading and listening for today.

I’ll leave you with a question: What is the subject, theme, and objective of your work life right now? Can you define it? Would it help you to sit for a moment and do so? Give it a shot…

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Daily Discipline and Chipping Away At It

Today felt quite blue collar. No big major breakthroughs, just chipping away at a few work projects, and keeping my current daily disciplines of listening to or reading quality content for 30 minutes a day and writing.

I think I overdosed on content today. There were actually a couple more short podcasts that I listened to, but it takes a long time to link all of them up. And life isn’t a competition to see who listens to the most podcasts.

The point of this whole blog is action. Honestly, there weren’t a lot of immediately actionable items in today’s listening.

Today’s Action: Act on my 6 ‘things to do daily’ from yesterday

Yesterday’s challenge to come up with 3 things to do daily for my two main roles at work resulted in, obviously, 6 things to do. I made sure to do at least 2 of them. I know it doesn’t sound like much, and I need to step it up to do all six, but keeping these six as priorities created major clarity for the day.

Tomorrow, though, I definitely need to focus on forging new relationships (key to my second most important role – a more direct sales role).

A second action: Create my “next-day knock” list. This came from the Rory Vaden Daily Discipline podcast noted below (which apparently he also wrote about on a blog post from Octover, 2010 – a great lesson in repurposing content, by the way).

The purpose of this list is to have handy exactly who to call the next day. At the end of the previous day, always create a list of the first few calls of the next day. This removes a little of the call reluctance that uses ‘getting the list together’ as an excuse.

List made.

A third action: Continue keeping up with my day-job blog. I’m writing this blog and another blog daily right now. It can get hairy at times, but I was able to keep both going for one more day.

Today’s Listening

In the Meantime: Where’s Your Focus – North Point Community Church, Andy Jones

In the Meantime: Believe It or Not – North Point Community Church, Andy Stanley

A Quick Sales Tip To Start The Week Strong September 21, 2014 – Your Sales Playbook

A Quick Sales Tip To Start The Week Strong September 28, 2014 – Your Sales Playbook

Kevin Brown: The Hero Effect – Daily Discipline Podcast with Rory Vaden

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This blog is a response to Dan Miller’s unintentional challenge from his podcast on August 15, 2014: If you read or listen to 30 minutes of quality content a day, you’ll double your income. 

From September 1, 2014 through March 1, 2015, I will be doing the following:

  1. Listening or reading to 30 minutes of success, growth, business, spiritual, or other mindset-shifting, skill-sharpening content.
  2. Selecting one action item from that content (with some leeway to select an action from a previous day’s content).
  3. Doing that one action.
  4. Writing about the action or some other idea from the reading and listening of the day. 

 

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