The Sales Experiment

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. Identify what you should NOT be doing, but only do because you want people to like you. Stop doing that stuff.
  3. 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?

 

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How Can I 10X My Business (or any other area)?

I heard the other day (on Dan Miller’s 48 Days Online Radio Show) that it’s sometimes easier to 10X your business than it is to move the needle up incrementally.

Interesting idea. I like it.

Why not 10X your efforts if you can?

I understand daily, disciplined action. I believe that it really does take small, simple steps over time to make lasting change.

But sometimes doesn’t there need to be a complete tear down and rebuild?

Sometimes don’t we need to bring in a new set of eyes to see the huge opportunities that we sometimes miss while our vision is clouded by the day to day grind?

Perhaps you need to pull out your calendar and hack out all the junk that you truly don’t want to do so that you can throw your heart into the fewer things you’d love to do.

Maybe you need to quit saying yes to so many people so you can treat your priorities with a sense of urgency.

10X your business by extreme focus or by completely reframing your career or sales process. If what you’re doing is only making incremental change, then perhaps you need to carpet bomb what you’re doing and infuse new life, new ideas, or even a knew context.

Give it a shot. I know I am.

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

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

say no so you can say yes

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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Reading and Listening

See You at the Top – Zig Ziglar

First Christmas – Joel Thomas, North Point Community Church

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