I sat down with a colleague today and worked on setting up a personal sales and marketing plan for the next few months.

He had engaged me to assist him in creating a plan that he could implement to kick his sales efforts up a notch.

I’m not technically a sales trainer, but consuming content and attempting to implement said content has helped me to recognize patterns in me and in others.

I see that while many of us want change, we fail to create deadlines to reinforce and establish new habits.

Therefore, when I sat down with my colleague, I attempted to focus on developing a clear system.

The Importance of Committing to New Habits

My suggestion was to be systematic and habit-focused:

1. Decide on an ideal client profile.
2. Create a list of at least 100 potential prospects that fit said profile.
3. Commit to weekly prospecting appointments with self that are every bit as important to commit to as client appointments. Be violently committed to that time.
4. Use that time in a systematic way: make calls, intentionally research client organizations, write content.
5. Make note of ALL questions that current clients and prospects ask and have that running list handy.
6. Use those questions to create consistent emails, blog posts, mailers.
7. Reach out to that list of 100 as close to a monthly basis as possible as the relationships open up.

And I suggested that he commit to having the list of 100 list in a week and to have the first email scheduled to go out on a specific day, even if only one person is on his list on that day.

We settled on a specific date to send out that initial email, but I felt some hesitation. No list yet. Who is he going to email?

I said that it doesn’t matter. Put a couple current clients on your list and send something out.

Give yourself a deadline. Go ahead and write the email for that matter. Why not?

Change Is Simply The Accumulation of New Habits

This whole program will require developing new habits. The habit to schedule a weekly appointment or two solely dedicated to prospecting. The habit to make note of common questions for content fodder. The habit of sending regular emails out. The habit of taking time to map out potential clients’ organizations and finding connections.

All of these habits require intentionality. They require doing more than just popping on LinkedIn to send a connection request when the idea hits. They require more than just allowing client call-ins to determine who goes into the funnel.

To be better than average requires quality habits.

[Tweet “Quality habits don’t happen by accident. Crappy, useless habits happen by accident.”]

Quality habits happen by creating deadlines, taking a bit of time to plan, and scheduling them in the calendar. There really is no other way to build a new habit.

It’s consistent, daily action.

I hope that my colleague (and I, for that matter) will find some traction. I hope that there’ll be enough reward from forging ahead that the new habits will be reinforced.

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Recent Reading and Listening

Social Media Marketing Happy Hour 163: Fight Your Border Bullies 

Dawn Marrs Ortiz and Traci Reuter are two of my new podcast best friends. I love short podcasts with big nuggets of info and experience-gained knowledge. This particular podcast discussed the idea of ‘border bullies’ – those folks who stand around the edge of your safe life and encourage you strongly NOT to push the envelope and slay your dragons and forge new territory and pursue passions (and all the other metaphors that indicate moving outside of your comfort zone).

3 Questions That Matter Most This Year – Jeb Blount, Sales Gravy Podcast

Jeb’s is another wonderfully short, power-packed podcast. This episode encourages you to answer these questions this year:

1. What do you want?
2. How do you plan to get it?
3. How bad do you want it?

It’s stuff you know, but more than likely you need to listen to it again. I, for one, have learned that it matters not how much I know. It matters what I do with what I know. As soon as ‘I’ve heard that before’ comes out of my mouth, the very next statement better be, ‘And I did something about it.’

Pinterest Smart Feed Is It Bad for Business? – Oh So Pinteresting Podcast with Cynthia Sanchez

I love Pinterest. I’m not all that consistent with it, but thanks to Ms. Sanchez, I’m getting better and better at it. I highly recommend her podcast and other content. She’s the go-to girl on the topic (in my humble opinion).