How did yesterday go? Did you control your schedule, or did external forces determine how you spent your time? Here are five things you probably already know you should have done… but didn’t… because time got away from you:
1. Exercise for thirty minutes. You know you’re supposed to do this. You might have even promised yourself that you would at the beginning of the day. But then the phone rang, or you remembered that past-due proposal you had to get out. Then one thing after another put exercise on the back burner (which never got lit!).
2. Outbound sales activity. Whether it’s phone calls, knock-on-the-door sales calls, or even email contacts (least effective of the three), you’ve got to do something every day to reach out to new prospects and to keep in touch with past customers. If you’re sitting in the office waiting for new business to come find you, you’re going to be in for some long days. Maybe yesterday wasn’t one of them, but eventually you’re going to have to work your sales pipeline. Don’t wait until the phone stops ringing to pick it up and dial.
3. Lead Generation Activity. If you read # 2, and said to yourself; “What pipeline?”, this is the answer. You should always be looking for new leads. Get out and network. Get on social media with the goal of attracting leads instead of looking at what your high school sweetheart (the one that got away) is up to. Post some content that would be valuable to your prospects on a blog you know they’re likely to visit… and offer an incentive to visit your web site at the end of the post. A free report, a free consultation, a free upgrade… give them a reason to raise their hand and identify themselves as a prospect. When they respond, they are officially “in your pipeline.” Now go back to # 2.
4. Do something just for YOU. Do something you feel passionate about. Go to the beach. Play nine holes of golf. Call a friend or lover and go out for lunch. Take a nap. (Take a nap after lunch with your friend or lover!) Do something that is just for you and not in response to what someone else wants you to do. Mental health is a fragile thing. It’s just like physical health: You don’t know you have a problem until the pain makes it impossible to ignore. If you’re having trouble sleeping at night, if you’re irritable, if your relationships are suffering… you’re getting warning signs. If you didn’t goof off for an hour or two yesterday, do it today. Heck, it’s Friday. Start your weekend at noon today!
5. Organize your office. I know… the piles on your desk are organized. You know right where everything is. I’ve heard it time and time again from consulting clients. But the fact is, you can’t be productive with piles of waiting work staring you in the face. They’re a distraction, even if you don’t realize it. Get your files organized for easy retrieval and put those papers in them. If you can scan the papers and eliminate some of the physical mess, do it. Then organize your computer files. Clean up those directories and sub-subdirectories. Every minute you spend searching for stuff, on your desk, in your file cabinets or on your computer, is a minute that could have been more productive. Invest some time now in cleaning up the mess. Then, do a backup of your computer files. All that work will have been wasted if you have a hard-drive crash and the files go away. I don’t care whether you use a cloud backup or an external hard drive, just do it and do it regularly. (By the way: Keep that external drive somewhere other than your office. If the building burns down or floods, you lose everything anyway!)
And here’s a bonus tip: Plan your next day. If you put together a to-do list for tomorrow at the end of the day, your mind will organize the activities in your sleep. Don’t believe me? Try this one for a week and tell me you didn’t get more done. I promise, it works.
I could give you twenty more, but then we couldn’t call this article the Friday Five, could we? I already broke the rules with the bonus tip. Oh, one more: Break a rule. Stop doing things the way you always have. The new way might be better. If it’s not, you can always go back. That’s seven tips in the Friday Five. What a bargain!
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Larry Mersereau, CTC
Smart business owners, marketers and sales professionals (people just like you!) turn to Larry Mersereau, CTC, for the ideas and insights they need to bring in more business and take home more money. More at http://PromoPower.com.
