Fall has officially begun, and we're deep into it already
Summer's gone with a snap of the fingers and a turn of the page of the calendar with lingering self promises that "next year, I'm going to plan my schedule better."
Good luck on that btw...
But right now, all of us sales professionals are out in the field, intensely traveling and dialing for dollars in the race to the finish just 65 workdays before the Christmas break. Yes, you do have a full 5 days in the week after Christmas to close deals...assuming you can find everyone and have their telephone numbers at the ski slopes.
1. First & Most Importantly... Count the Days
Just like the national election on November 1st, there is a definitive, finite end to this selling season on Friday, December 30th. Time's up, the buzzer sounds, and the game is over. The very good news is that there are 64 robust days for blocking and tackling down the field, and, that's plenty of time to win during this quarter.
BUT...you must be extremely focused, highly guarded of your own time, which is the only currency that you can control, and, yes, you can absolutely control your time!.
- Banish the weekly time wasters. You already know what they are. Just stop!
- Get into work 30 minutes earlier. Should not be a big deal and 30 minutes in 10 hours is huge!
- Stop hanging out with negative and time-wasting co-workers!
- Plan your calls only for "the money hours" and block them off now for all October & November
- Most importantly, do the same for your travel schedules
- Focus only on you, the success of your team and pretty much, say "no" to everything else!
2. Use your Saturday mornings
Yea, I know that Saturdays are your recoup times after a tough week. plus they are your errands and "take-the-kids to-everywhere" times. I get that, but let me bring you back to having only 64 days left in the season. Lock in that image now of Game Day on December 30th with the final score flashing on the board, the band's playing, and the crowd of your associates and family are cheering your victory...just like the Pats game superb win last night.
Same concept. Same dedicated training time. Same personal sacrifices! Same Super Bowl !
- Logistically, get into the habit for the next two months of lighting up your laptop at 5:00 on Saturdays and focus that time only on developing those projects, solutions and proposals that will have higher impact, bigger dollar closing opportunities. These are the deals that require concentrated time to think through, so set aside that "extra time" from 5:00 to 8:00 and just totally focus. Just remember, this is project work time, not catch-up-on-emails-time.
- Both emotionally and pragmatically, you're just going to have to Cowboy-Up and put in more time for the next two months. You can make up the lost sleep in January. Think about rewarding your Q4 success by making reservations now for a couple of long January-February ski weekends with the family. Better yet, start thinking of how you and a select small group of other sales leaders will be enjoying President's Club on the beach in Mexico in February.
3. Commit now to your own Life Long Learning
As everyone who reads these, you know by know that I have the privilege of being a professor at Tufts where I teach marketing, and a lecturer at MIT where the subjects are business planning and marketing. I look back at my career, my education and my connections in the community, and there is nothing that has better equipped me for dealing with the complexities of business and the continuing revolutions in the professions of sales and marketing than the specific process of teaching university students.
As salespeople and managers, we are deep into a noisy revolution in the practice of our profession, and our world is just about ready to undergo another massive shift in the use of sales and marketing technologies and their impact on us being able to product much higher value with our prospects and, most importantly, with our existing customers.
The question then is...
"What are you personally going to do to extend your own learning and staying on top of your game?"
- Think about teaching and becoming an adjunct. Want to know how? Just email me; we'll talk.
- What's your own personal skills and management development program for 2017?
- I guarantee you, the very act on you taking action will energize and emotionally stimulate you!
- It's your personal commitment to stay relevant and urgent in a sea of massive change in our profession
Stay on Top of Your Game
For the past 15 years or so, we've been running these twice-a-year Sales Management Boot Camps focused on just that specific persona: managers responsible for revenue, be they CEOs, Presidents, VPs or Regional Managers of companies. When we were first starting these camps, I noticed that Tom Jessee, the highly respected and very successful head of sales at MFS had signed up. Since I was pretty impressed that he was coming, I decided to give him a call and ask, quite simply, why, and his response was very direct in that he felt that in order to stay on top of his game, he needed to explore new ideas and step outside his own industry.
Over the years of now hundreds of attendees, Tom became very representative of our average attendee from a wide variety of industries and sizes of companies, all of whom had one critical mission: "I need to continue to rapidly grow sales, and since I know that the profession of buying and selling has now changed forever, I need to stay on top of my game".
Tom is no different than any professional athlete! Neither are you nor I. We all need to train, to stay on top of our game, and learn new skills especially in sales and in marketing today!
Take a look below, click on the presentation, email, text, messenger or call me, and I'll take you through the details quickly and share some of our experiences...
THE NOVEMBER 13TH-15TH SALES MANAGEMENT BOOT CAMP
You should think about attending our upcoming November:
- 500+ graduates
- CEO's, Presidents and Heads of Sales-national or regional
- Tons of very positive testimonials
For more information, just click on below...
http://www.brainshark.com/derbymanagement/vu?pi=zFqziXuixzFFz0
Derby Management...for 25 years
-Sales & Marketing Productivity Experts
-Business & Strategy Planning Specialists
-Senior Management Coaches for CEOs & VPs
Box 171322, Boston, MA 02117
Jack's Cell: 617-504-4222
jack@derbymanagement.com
managementcoach@gmail.com
Tags: sales productivity, sales effectiveness, sales management boot camp
