What's an Event?  What's an Activity?

Today's my birthday.  

I was born at 10 minutes past midnight in Chicago's Cook County Hospital in a blue collar, South Side neighborhood of meat cutters and steelworkers and the home of my first generation Polish grandparents.  Wonderful people and wonderful memories that I still remember today since they were most often wrapped around events surrounding birthdays, Catholic holy days, marriages and funerals. All of these events are for me indelibly marked through emotions, the rituals of the church, and, of course, being Polish, the smells and kitchen sounds of unbelievable food piled high on huge oaken dining room tables.

Those are all "Events"  

• You and I have absolutely no control over them!  
• They just happen....  
• They just are...

...and our lives, our work and careers, and our families and friends are all calendarized and remembered through their existence, and most of all through their celebrations.

In our work lives, events include the dates of being hired, of being promoted, of becoming the top salesperson, of breaking through that $100K comp floor, and of receiving that first supervisor or manager position.  All very memorable achievements that, most probably, are noted in a calendar somewhere or in a personal journal.

In my own life, looking back at prior birthdays, I have typically tried "to take control" over the structuring of how certain events were architected or celebrated, but then I realized that, at best, this was very difficult, and at worst, I was pretty bad at it as was evidenced by the fact that my wife arranged our "surprise" wedding with 250 guests.  

Actually, everyone knew about the wedding in terms of all of the activity planning and the logistics; they just believed that they were coming to a surprise birthday party for me.  In fact, it was only me who was surprised since I had been told that I would be going to "a large party with friends".  The surprise occurred when she announced to the guests, who did arrive expecting to celebrate my surprise birthday, that we were getting married "right now".   Band played.  Minister officiated.  Band played some more.  Married!

As I said, one cannot control any events. They just happen!

Activities are totally in our control.  Results are not!

Very different from events, which we cannot control, every activity that we do is totally in our control.  In reality, we all have a wide variety of other factors that impact our level of "control"; however, the vast majority of these can be easily dealt with by applying both more money and more effective time management skills to the issue.

As salespeople, all of us are held responsible for the performance of results:

• quota, revenue, bookings, and all the acronyms that go with it
• gross margin, expense ratios and net income
• employee hiring, turnover and testing
• ...and on and on and on some more.  

In reality, no matter how hard we work, none of us can control any of those results

All we have "control" over is our activities that will define the results we want.  So, although I cannot control the first bullet above of quota, revenue and bookings, I do have total control over...

• My monthly key account activity planning
• My monthly territory mapping
• My monthly new prospect call activities
• My sales process, my CRM and the use of all of its embedded tools 
• My own sales skills levels and personal sales training programs

We're a couple of weeks away from the most important quarter of the year.  Q2 represents a time to re- plan activities, reset metrics, and upgrade our personal best practices as a result of working with our peers to test out what worked best for each of them over the last 12 weeks.  With this knowledge, and a bit of added planning time, we can totally resupply our arsenal of sales tools and selling skills to take on the complexities of the quarter ahead.  

This weekend, take control for just two hours, and plan out...

1. ...your Q2 KAPS (Key Account Plan) activities for the entire second quarter.  
   • Purpose:  Review directly with every account your own plan for the balance of the year
   • Benefit:  F2F transparent and objective alignment on one another's 2016 objectives.  
   • Added Benefit:  Fill in your travel schedules by visiting 5 new opportunities in each geo
2. ...how to achieve a 50% personal improvement in your selling technologies
   • Objective:  become totally fluent in your CRM and its integrated apps by the end of Q2
     This is a very achievable objective if you get a tutor and set aside just two hours per week
3. ...your detailed vacation plans as your award for celebrating your Q1 & Q2 success
   • Benefit:  the process and the reward will focus you
   • Added Benefit:  your family may now accept your time away and working nights