In last week’s blog post, I proclaimed that the biggest factor between good and great salespeople was that great salespeople are proactive. The good salespeople respond. They work hard. They’re nice people. They’re good salespeople … but they’re not great, and they won’t be great until they become proactive.
With this proclamation, I committed to releasing five ideas for salespeople to be more proactive in their week-to-week activity. And this week we have number two.
Idea #2: Block off “Proactive Time” on your calendar and treat it like a client meeting.
I’m a calendar geek. It keeps me organize for the future and helps me track data from the past. Before I go to bed on Sunday, I have every hour of the week planned, including buffer time that will undoubtedly arise. Do you know the first things I add to my calendar every week? See below, in this exact order…
- Workouts (Five days that are planned through the weekend)
- Meditation time (Twenty minutes per day)
- Professional Development (One hour per week)
- Outbound Prospecting Work (Ninety-minute block)
These are activities that I must proactively do in order to live the life I want to live. No one is going to make me do these things – only I can make myself workout or call prospective customers. Everything else comes next. Preparation and debriefing of meetings, proposal development, email responses, etc. I also commit Mondays and Fridays to Strategic Initiatives and Content Development, with the goal of doing eight total hours toward those two areas every week (understanding that other things will arise during those days).
Ok, that’s easy. Everyone can add a two-hour block that says “Prospecting”, right? Yes, but do you? I suggest adding these things as recurring appointments at the same time every week. You can move it, but you can’t delete it. For example, I have outbound prospecting in my calendar every Tuesday between 8:30 and 10:00, but about a third of the time I must move it because of travel or unavoidable appointments. That’s ok – as long as I move it and do it.
Now’s the hard part: doing it. There’s not really a silver bullet to this one … you must have the right mindset. Right now, I’m in the Delta Sky Club in the NY LaGuardia airport writing this post. It’s in my calendar and I’m treating this appointment just like a client call. Email is off, ringer is off, and I’m focused on this one task. This mindset takes months to really stick, but once it does, you’re unstoppable.
Looking forward to presenting Idea #3 next week … it dovetails beautifully with this idea.
