Have you ever thought about what would happen if we didn’t have Leap Year every four years? After 50 years, we’d notice a change around the solstice dates, but that’s about it. After 300 years, we’d wonder why it was so hot during the holidays (those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). After 700 years, we’d be completely backwards – snow skiing in the summer and swimming in the winter. Without Leap Year, we’d slowly but surely be turning our way of life upside down.
As you likely know, the Earth takes 365.24 days to orbit the sun. Therefore, every four years we add an extra day at the end of February to make up for the extra 0.24 days. We catch up. If we don’t do this, then things will get way out of hand, as described above.
As a sales professional, you probably have a million tasks and ideas coming into your world every day. I’m sure you get behind. How do you catch up? Do you have a Leap Year in your routine, or do you try to stay on top of every item every minute of every day? I suggest accepting that you’ll fall behind on many things, and build in a Leap Year to catch up. Below are some ideas, but I encourage you to create your own process.
- Go in the office for a half-day, one Saturday per month.
- Spend 30 minutes every day catching up.
- Close out your email two to three times per day.
- Clean up your CRM / pipeline report every Friday afternoon.
- Complete and turn in your expense reports every Wednesday morning.
The purpose of these ideas for a productive routine is to keep you from getting too behind on things. Once a sales person gets too behind, they typically forget to send a quote or return a customer’s call. The details slip, and so does their performance. If you can create a routine that allows you to get behind, but then catch up periodically, your productivity will increase drastically.
Below is my routine:
- At the end of every weekday, I close out my email, CRM tasks, and meeting notes. For the latter two, I try to complete at the time of execution, but that doesn’t always happen, so I catch up at the end of the day.
- Every Wednesday afternoon at 5:00, I spend about an hour or two catching up on those longer-term items on which I fall behind – expense reports, invoices, longer-term emails, pipeline report, travel requests to my assistant, etc.
- One a month (usually the first Friday), I spend a couple hours on the much-longer-term items – review of my annual plan, monthly profit & loss report to our accountant, pay our bills, update monthly metrics, etc.
Each step of this routine has a different purpose. It’s taken me years to construct the ideal routine for me, and it might take you a while, too. However, you need to start somewhere, so maybe just block off a couple hours on Friday afternoon to simply catch up.
One last note and factoid that you may not know – every 100 years not divisible by 400 skips Leap Year. We didn’t do this in 2000 because it’s divisible by 400, but there will be no Leap Year in the year 2100. Even though we catch up every four years, the Earth still shifts a little too much forward, and that shift needs correcting about every 100 years.
For your business, you should consider something similar. Once a year, get away for a day – even if you have to spend a Saturday or vacation day – and perform some strategic thinking and planning. As a sales professional, you’re probably in the weeds every week. Once a year, step back and think creatively. You’ll be amazed how enjoyable this day becomes, and how much more successful you’ll be.
