Establishing Boundaries and Defining Enough
In order to be successful, you need to do enough of the things that will make you successful. That's a simple concept, it's the 'whats' and the 'how manys' that are tougher to define.
I once wrote a brief post on Linkedin about doing what it takes to be successful.
"I don't care if it's selling, writing, running, parenting, whatever... You know what to do in order to be good at it. The more you can discipline yourself to do it, the more success you'll find."
The premise is that many of us know what we need to do, but just aren't doing enough of it. It's a fair statement, and it relates to establishing boundaries and eliminating a lot of the things that don't really need to be done, yet find ways to creep into our daily lives anyway.
If you're not able to establish boundaries, you have one of two primary issues: (1) You either haven't decided what's most important, or (2) you don't believe enough in yourself to actually say no to the stuff getting in your way.
It's difficult to decide what's really important when everything seems really important. Think about it though, 'important' is a relative term. If everything was important nothing would be important right? Jim Collins says that when you have more than three priorities, you actually have zero priorities. That's a tough pill to swallow, yet I agree. When you dig down deep and get brutally honest with yourself, some stuff just doesn't matter as much. It's just that we lie to ourselves about being able to handle more, rather than make tough decisions and start turning things down.
FOMO strikes again.
What are the things you really need to do?
If you're in sales, I can say almost unequivocally, that you need to spend more time selling than you are right now. A large majority of underperforming salespeople owe their lack of sales success to lack of sales activity. The excuses abound, but I'm not saying they're not busy, and I'm not even calling anybody lazy. I'm saying they're not selling.
If you looked back at your calendar over the past three weeks, how many new opportunities have you identified and attempted to contact? How many sales meetings have you scheduled? How many sales conversations have you had? How many of them have led to commitments to take the next step, whether that's another meeting or a closed opportunity?
If you look forward on your calendar, do you have time set aside to carry out prospecting activities? Do you have meetings scheduled with an understanding of logical next steps? Or are you waiting for them to magically happen?
If you're not proactively approaching your calendar, you're not proactively approaching your business.
How much of them is enough?
Our constant connectedness leads to a feeling that if you can be doing something productive, then certainly you should be. The feeling can spiral out of control quite quickly, and that desire for productivity often leads to an utter lack of focus. So once again, we have to go back to establishing boundaries.
A past blog article that I wrote talks about a scorable sales system. I recommend you read it, but here's the gist: Each one of the four steps in the sales process I mentioned above has an associated point value, 1-4. Your job is to score 25 points a week in any combination. If you do that, you can bank on the fact that you're doing enough selling to grow and sustain your business.
The actual number of points may vary depending on your industry and your role, but 25 is the right place to start. While there's no rule of thumb for SDR's who prospect 50 hours a week, I also know a lot of business owners who can thrive on 10. I've used it with several clients and it's yet to fail me.
The scoreboard serves two important purposes. First, it establishes a way to measure meaningful activities, which can then be increased. Secondly, it gives you full permission to shut it down once you've reached your activity goal.
Of course, if you'd like to, you can score more. But within the confines of this system, that becomes a choice rather than an obligation.
It's easy to choose to ride bikes with your kids to go and get ice cream after dinner. It's much harder to do that when you feel there's so much work to be done, and you're obligated to get those TPS reports sent in by tomorrow.
The simple adoption of this system transformed my productivity, my revenue, my income, and my career. That's not to mention my job satisfaction and my happiness.
I suggest you give it a try. Just because it's unconventional doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Join the conversation in the Rethink The Way You Sell Community.
Jeff Bajorek
Real. Authentic. Experience.
There’s a big difference between knowing how to sell and being able to. Jeff Bajorek spent over a decade in the field as a top performer. He’s been in your shoes. He knows what it will take. He can help you succeed.
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