essentialism Archives - The Sales Experiment

December 12, 2014 by Brett 2 Comments

The Need to Make Difficult Decisions about Everything We Do

the importance of difficult decision-making — Photo Credit: `James Wheeler via Compfight cc

We can only do so many things in a day.

If we shove as many things as possible into that day, we can only be so effective.

We become unfocused and scattered and obstacles start popping up that hinder us and distract us from our key goals.

One of the keys to being more effective (in any area) is to make difficult decisions.

We must decide between competing opportunities. Usually, there is something good about each opportunity that comes up, even if it’s just an opportunity to please someone and move their agenda forward at your own peril.

As I’ve been making my way through Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown, (affiliate link), I’ve been trying to be more selective and intentional about my decisions around sales opportunities.

The safest way to do this is to be clear about what the best possible opportunity would look like and only say yes to those opportunities.

I’m horrible at this practice, but it’s a practice that all of us could benefit from. Otherwise, we slowly lose control and direction.

Every decision is an opportunity to move ourselves toward our highest priorities.

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Today’s Reading and Listening

I’ve been consistently listening to and/or reading to positive, mindset-shifting, skill-sharpening content every day since 9/1/2014 per my commitment to the Dan Miller Challenge. I have not, though, been so hot at writing every day.

The Art of Focus Pt 1: Opportunity Cost Internet Business Mastery – Episode 255

Jeremy and Jason (the hosts) discuss the hidden costs in the decisions we make around our businesses along with some guidelines to help us make wiser choices. This dovetails nicely with my learning from Essentialism.

The 3 Drivers of Sales Success Part III – Your Sales Playbook Podcast, Episode 109

This podcast is a wonderful (free) masterclass on developing more business by strengthening our relationships with current clients.

December 1, 2014 by Brett Leave a Comment

The Three Disciplines of Effectiveness

The title of this post is a little arrogant because I have no empirical proof or research to back me up. Experience and common sense are on my side.

Here are the three disciplines that can lead to greater effectiveness, regardless of whether we’re talking about sales productivity or any other area of life:

Schedule the activities that you can’t stand doing but know that you have to do. This is the “eat your veggies” and “run stairs” discipline. Schedule it. Put it in your calendar.
Identify what you should NOT be doing, but only do because you want people to like you. Stop doing that stuff.
Identify the effective activities that you enjoy: Load your calendar up with those things.

Life’s too short to spend too much time doing effective, but miserable, activities. And it’s definitely too short to do stuff you shouldn’t be doing or don’t want to do or that has no bearing at all on improving your mind, heart, or soul.

I repeat:

Schedule the activities that are vital, but no fun.

Stop doing the stuff that you only do because you’re nice (i.e. saying ‘yes’ way too much)

Identify the effective and enjoyable activities. Do those things as much as humanly possible.

I’ve been reading Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown and those items above are my initial reaction to what I’m reading.

Some things have to be done, so we must schedule them and do them. Most things are others’ priorities imposed on our lives. We need to be vigilant that we don’t get overrun by these things. And once we identify what we can be passionate about doing that also moves us towards our goals, then we can go all in.

How about you?

What helps you be your most effective?

November 12, 2014 by Brett Leave a Comment

The Best Way to Say “Yes” is to Say “No”

Yesterday I received a Facebook message from an old friend.

The message was an invitation to get in on the most wonderful new opportunity (can you smell the network marketing opportunity about to drop on me?).

My buddy was pretty convincing. She didn’t take no for an answer. She assured me that it was the ground floor and she wasn’t inviting just anybody (appealing to the ‘early adopter’ in me while tossing in a dose of scarcity to pull at me a little bit).

As a matter of fact, she was meeting with a former/current insurance agent at a Starbucks around the corner from my office the next morning (which would be this morning). Couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

I was tempted. Yes. I was tempted with the Seacret Revolution (click on the link at your own peril as you might get swept away with the business opportunity of a lifetime).

But then it hit me. I have two and a half blogs. I have a full-time sales and marketing position at a wonderful firm. I’m assisting a couple people with social media marketing efforts. More importantly, I have a family that I love and a few home projects that need to get done.

If I say ‘Yes’ to this opportunity, I’m saying ‘No’ to my effectiveness in one or more of these other areas.

Something would have to give.

I then remembered Michael Hyatt’s recent podcast on his 10 top books of all time (and another podcast of his dedicated to the book Essentialism). In both Podcasts, Hyatt discusses Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less and this key idea:

When we say “no” to something, it gives us the opportunity to say “yes” to something else.

I love it when my epiphanies can be traced to content I’ve been consuming.

If I go to this 9am coffee to discuss this relationship marketing opportunity and get sucked in, I’m saying ‘No’ to being my best at my other responsibilities. Truth be told, I should exercise saying ‘No’ to a few of my current commitments. This fellow needs some margin.

We simply don’t have the mental, physical, and emotional bandwidth to say yes to everything.

The best way to say yes, is to say no.

I have no problem with people asking me for my time or energy or for my involvement. It’s on me to be protective and to filter new requests. That’s why we all need to be diligent around knowing and understanding our priorities. If someone presents us with a task or an ‘opportunity of a lifetime’ and it doesn’t fit within those priorities (or doesn’t truly pique our interest), then we must say no.

Audit Your “Yesses” Regularly

Something I’ve not been good at is auditing my commitments. Are there things I’m doing that I simply shouldn’t be doing?

What about you?

Are you over-burdened?

Does your schedule have margin?

Are you a “yes” person to the detriment of your personal health, your relationships, your family?

Audit your calendar and commitments to see.

Audit Your Clients

If you’re in sales, are you committing to prospects or clients for whom you can’t do your best work? If so, then make it a priority to start saying ‘No’ to those clients and prospects.

We don’t have to work with every person who can fog up a mirror. We can be selective. If we pile our books of business with clients that suck our energy, we can’t pour into those who appreciate what we do for them.

What Do You Need to Audit?

We could take this auditing and saying ‘no’ thing pretty far. Some of us might need to audit relationships, food choices, addictions, media, social media, or any number of things that battle against our ultimate goals and priorities.

What do you need to drop? What needs to take up less space in your world?

Learn to say ‘No’ so you can be all in with your ‘Yes’.

Until tomorrow…

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