Happy 4th !!!
With the counts done and in for the quarter, time to kick back today, take a deep breath, straighten out the desk, put the last entries into Salesforce and plan for the weekend…and, of course, for the turn of the calendar page come next Tuesday as you jump headfirst into Q3.
Out on the beach today at 5:00 grabbing the early morning light and doing the inevitable search for beach glass from last night’s higher than normal tide. I also wanted the opportunity to take a look at the house from the beach and see if my 4th of July decorations of flags and bunting that I hung last night made the appropriate statement. As I walked back, I realized that this was a definite “Oh, yeah, that’s what’s I’m talking about”, kind of statement for sure. Red, white & blue everywhere…just the way it should be for the 4th !
The 4th is one of those very few perfect weekends. No presents to wrap. No big sit down elaborately prepared dinners with way too much food-just barbecue and beer. No inviting the relatives that you really don’t like, but your spouse is pressuring you with, “…but it’s Christmas” (Thanksgiving, Easter, Hanukah, their birthday and on and on). And finally it’s always nice to have a holiday that typically includes the verb “Celebrate” when describing it.
Just three things to think about over the long weekend.
1. Relax
It’s been a long, drawn out quarter. From a winter-locked April to the heat of June, selling in Q2 was not the easiest time by far. Bottom line is that the market is still way too "Fear of the Unknown" as a result of paltry job growth and the looming crush of the deficit. It is what it is. You and I can't change this, other than sell our value around these bigger macro issues.
But for right now, today through Monday, it’s time to relax. Read a book, hang out in the garden, hike in the woods or walk on the beach with the kids. Just anything that forcibly sucks you away from the desk. Not suggesting that you un-tether yourself from the oxygen of your cell phone or iPad, but no big projects, okay?
2. Think
Almost no one will be working today. Calling or emailing anyone today will have the same result as if you were tapping away on the day before Christmas. Ain’t no one going to answer. The weather’s superb and everyone will be taking off early and driving to the lake, beach, woods or just home to get an early jump on the weekend.
Sometime this morning, open up a new page on your computer and just start jotting down the one or three critical improvements that you can personally make in your sales style, skills, sales process or your tactics between now and the end of the year. We’re all professional athletes as salespeople (or manager or docs or accountants or analysts or whatever we do), and just like athletes, we always need to be thinking through how we can train ourselves to improve our performance.
Keep it simple. The real difficulty is winnowing down the list to maybe just one item and then putting a plan into motion. I know exactly where I want to improve (I know, I need a really long list) over the next six months, but then "stuff" gets in the way, so I try very hard not to fall into the January health club signup syndrome.
Now that you've priortized those one or two items, put a simple three point game plan in place to do it...which is why you need to keep this list limited to only one or two items.
3. Celebrate
I'm not going to get all huggy about this, but do take a bit of time just to think and talk to your kids about what this holiday means. To me, it's One Simple Thing-Freedom. I'm an amateur geneaologist and have records of my G6 grandfather fighting in the Revolution in Arnold's disastrous hardship campaign into Canada. This brings the 4th of July, 1776 into reality when I think of those defeated Vermonters walking in the snow out of Canada with just rags wrapped around their feet.
That's it. Just wanted to keep this real simple...just like the 4th.
Go Celebrate!
Jack
Head Coach
jack@derbymanagement.com
