The Sales Experiment

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The Need to Make Difficult Decisions about Everything We Do

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.

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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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The Importance of Taking Action (as demonstrated by the Small Business Girl)

Today’s Listening and Reading

I finished The Dip by Seth Godin.

What an 11 Year Old Can Teach Us – Advanced Selling Podcast. As a result of listening to this podcast, I went and found…

533: It’s Not the Product, It’s the Person – This American Life Podcast, featurning the ‘Super Business Girl’, Asia Newson. This little ball of energy is known as Detroit’s Youngest Entrepreneur.

Episode 107 The 3 Drivers Of Sales Success Part I September 16, 2014 – Your Sales Playbook, Paul Castain. In this podcast, Mr. Castain talked all about driver 1: Acquiring new business.

Find Your Sales Voice by Taking Action

Castain needs to have Asia Newson open up for him at his keynotes. She knows how to acquire new business. More importantly, she takes action. Hers is a pretty powerful example of using what she has: energy, youth, a vision for her life, and using her products as an excuse for people to pay her for being the ambitious, yet winsome girl that she is.

Not sure if that made sense, but in simple terms, she just goes for it and does not let fear dominate her or cause her to procrastinate.  Granted, she has a silver bullet – her cuteness and her appeal as a young go-getter. Most of us old crusty salesguys don’t have ‘cute’ going for us.

But we have something going for us. We just need to find it and get out in front of people. Perhaps it’s even in the taking action and getting in front of people that we eventually figure out what we have to bring to the table. How do we know if we’re fearfully not taking action?

As we interact and get out there and knock it around, we start finding our sales voice. Just like a writer finds her voice and starts attracting the right readers, so does a salesperson develop a voice by taking action. He then starts attracting the right clients.

But it all starts with taking action (at least one action a day), which brings me to today’s action item…

Today’s Action Item: Castain’s 2 – 2 – 2

This is an exercise where you make sure to send two coldish emails, make two cold calls, and drop two cold letters in the mail.

That was my action item. Sadly, I did not take the action. I did schedule an appointment with someone from a cold email from earlier this week (because of this challenge), but I did not do it today.

My excuse is that I’m going out of town on Friday and Monday and am trying to make sure all ducks are in a row. My second excuse is that given my current role as a liaison between the insurance agents in my agency and the insurance companies, I’m less tied to a prospecting list, so I’d have to dust off some old databases.

But excuses are dumb and a waste. I need to learn to see through them. There’s absolutely no reason to take 30 minutes, identify 6 individuals to reach out to, and then reach out. I have value to create. I should be getting that in front of folks.

Sorry my 5s of readers! We shall hit it again tomorrow. 2-2-2. I’m on it.

Until tomorrow…

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