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#SellItOrScheduleIt
Respecting Time by Making Appointments
As part of organizing actions in time, establish pre-arranged appointment times for when they work best for YOU (scheduled at lower opportunity times for other, harder-to-control actions). Use the repeat feature on your calendar so that you hold those times week after week. When you offer an appointment time that is agreed to, send a calendar invitation that can be accepted and ‘saved for this event only’ from the series…leaving that spot open next week at the same time. Increase the opportuni…
Organizing Actions in Time
“Time Management” is a misnomer because you cannot manage time. You can, however, manage ACTIONS in time.
Begin with your targets – what you WANT to accomplish. And working back from them, identify the actions that need to happen to achieve them. Start small and plan the actions at the best time to execute them and to achieve the result.
Plan a week at a time and support the week with a daily to-do list...but expand your perspective beyond one day…don’t rely on a daily list to manage a week …
New Habits
Now that you have picked an imperfection to work on (and if you haven’t, please do…tardiness is clearly one that can always be addressed if it’s an issue for you), how is it going?
What are the structures you put in place to help you? Did you put alerts on your phone to remind you to do something (practice a new action, get out the door!) or recurring actions in your calendar to start to build a new skill?
Building habits takes intention, prompting, repetition, patience, adjustment…and celebr…
Costly Conspirators
Our first foray into Imperfections this month was to consider them as Charming Idiosyncrasies, which they surely can be.
Another point of view is that imperfections are not so charming or amusing. And those imperfections that impact our own efforts and those of others are particularly troublesome. We may look away from these and hope that others don’t notice, but they do notice.
Imperfections that impact others, like chronic tardiness or inability to complete a task on time, begin to w…
Calling After Delivery
In home furnishings retail showrooms, we have done a poor job with this area; it is an industry shortcoming!
We even have a name for this action: a can of worms that shouldn’t be opened. Seriously. We treat it as something to be avoided at all costs.
And yet, I assert that we could raise our revenues by 10-15% with this action ALONE. And to do that, we need to align our expectations with what is likely to happen and upgrade our skill of managing it when it does.
What does that mean?
Ex…
Actions Matter
Actions repeated create habits.
Actions are the only things that create results (not feelings or intentions or circumstances).
I often review goals that have action plans that are ‘insufficient for goal achievement.” What I mean by that is that the actions might have a value of $750K when repeated…which is GREAT…except that the goal is $1.1m. That’s not great. Make sure that the QUANTITY and the QUALITY of your actions are sufficient for the desired results. If you are not on track with your …
Identifying Pitfalls and Traps
Are you good for the first three days into a new initiative and then start to slip?
When do you stop doing the actions that you committed to?
Do you start to tell yourself: “It’s not that bad” or “It’s not that important?”
Rather than avoiding these natural tendencies, include them in your goals. Consider them BEFORE they happen so that when they pop up, you will be prepared for them.
For example, if you know that you start the month strong, make your first week goals and miss your thi…
Setting Goals
Happy New Year! (How long can we say that…all the way to the end of January…or the first time you speak with someone in the new year?)
If your goals aren’t completed yet (of course you have started them!), not to worry. Get busy on them so that you can start planning your strategy and actions. Here is a structure that works:
Always articulate your goals as a RESULT. Example: Write $1.2m in 2023. This example is the first rule:
S - Specific - Not vague or ambiguous. - [Write $1.2m] in 2023. …
Guardrails #2
To continue with the guardrail conversation… setting boundaries.
A boundary that helps guide the conversation is the ability to say “No.”
Say NO when the client/customer asks for things that cannot be done – either within the current budget or timeframe.
Say NO when the client/customer asks for additions without adding to what they are paying for it.
Say NO when the client/customer asks you to ‘take it out of your commission’.
Say NO when the client/customer asks you to do something that you know is…
Guardrails #1
In the very simplest of terms, as a sales professional, our job is to make it easy for our customers/clients to say yes… and to buy from us.
To do that, we need to truly be responsible for the entire sales interaction and how it goes, and where it ends up.
Guardrails help that.
By guardrails, I mean guiding the conversation so that it doesn’t veer off course and stays in the lane for the intended outcome. Guardrails include asking questions that will direct the discussion and get the answer…
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