Steps To Take To Stay On Your Mission

Steps to take to Stay on Your Mission. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. In today’s post, I will be sharing five steps to stay on your Mission. You believe you’re on the right track. You have defined a career mission, set up goals in line with your Mission, and set up a daily priority plan. Effective time management should kick in and take care of itself, right? Not so fast! As you become more productive, you may find that you’ll be forced to make choices. Some of these choices, if made correctly, will lead you to even greater heights, or if made poorly, will lead you to career disappointment.

Steps To Take To Stay On Your Mission

Let’s use Ted as an example.

Ted is a composite character made up of thousands of salespeople from around the country. Let’s look at Ted’s career:

Ted has recently made some significant changes in his career.

These changes have expanded his prospecting skills and his presentation skills – so now, several things are happening to him that has never happened before:

• First, he’s got too many customers, so he feels pulled into many directions at once.
• Second, he can feel himself slipping on service with his customers. He’s not returning phone calls promptly, not following up, and dropping the ball.
• Third, he’s beginning to spend more time away from home, his children are becoming distant, and his spouse is resentful of the business!

Sound familiar?

Are these challenges you’ve faced?

Unfortunately, many salespeople resort to something we have all done in our care when faced with these dilemmas. They take steps to sabotage their success.

Consider this quote from Dr Joyce Brothers – “We cannot consistently perform at a level inconsistent with our self-image.”

Is this true of you? Many salespeople view their newfound success with suspicion.

Why?

Because they have rarely experienced it and may have difficulty adjusting to a new self-image, many salespeople will reverse course and begin to swim back to their old lives instead of embracing success.

How do they do this?

Most salespeople don’t wake up one morning and say, “Well, today, I’m going to start failing!” Instead, most salespeople begin making bad decisions. These poor decisions can lead to a bad case of self-sabotage and a career crash.

So you may ask yourself, how can I succeed in my business and not feel overwhelmed?

How can I continue giving excellent service to my customers?

And most important, how can I stop working 80-hour weeks and still be productive?

Let’s Look At These Ways To Stay On Your Mission

Relegate/Delegate/Terminate

When studying your daily to-do list (you have one, right), you may find way too many items on the list to accomplish. So what can you do? Apply the simple but effective RDT method.

• Relegate – First, decide which must-do items are on the list to accomplish your long-term goals. These, of course, are your priorities. It would be best to relegate yourself that you must do these items and, most importantly, done first.
• Delegate – Next, when reviewing your to-do list, ask yourself if anyone could be doing these items instead of me. Can you outsource it, hire it, or could someone else be doing this work? Wise salespeople attempt to delegate as much as possible.
• Terminate – What is on your to-do list that does not have to be done? Are there items that are nothing more than busy work? If you can’t terminate them, put them at the bottom of the list.

Cut the Dead Wood

As your career begins to pick up steam, you may find that you cannot merely work with every customer. You may need to start choosing your customers. How? Qualify them harder. This may seem harsh at first. After all, you want to work with everyone, but you will not. One of the most challenging aspects of time management is knowing which priority takes priority. All customers are correct, but some are better than others. Here is a quick way to qualify your customers:

• Motivation Level – Do they want to buy?
• Timing – Are they ready to act now! Or are they stalling?
• Ability – Can they close the deal?

Deal with Paper Once

How many times do you move one piece of paper around your desk? Come on, and it’s more than just once! We all know we should do something about the piece of paper, but we have decided that it will look good in a new corner until next week (or the week after). So we keep shuffling, and shuffling, and shuffling. Sometimes one piece of paper becomes two pieces of paper or more.

So what can we do about it?

Use the one-touch rule.

Only touch the paper once before you do something with it. There are three uses for every piece of paper you have on your desk – Here they are:

• File It – Put it where it needs to go – Which is off your desk!
• Toss it – 90% of what comes across your desk is garbage!
• Deal With it – If it requires your attention, do something with it!

Regarding item number three, let me give you a tip: Deal with paper once a day! Set aside once during the day to deal with writing, deal with it and move on!

Automate Yourself

How long does it take to make ten phone calls? It takes some time. You have to look up the phone number, dial it, wait for it to ring, and then talk to someone on the other end. It is time-consuming to beat around the bush until you get to the topic you called about.

So what is the solution?

Force yourself to focus on the reason for your call, and cut to the chase in a polite, diplomatic way. Your contact at the other end will appreciate you not wasting their time.

Email is another simple solution.

How long does it take to email those same ten people? Not long, especially if your message is the same for each one.

Superstars learn to condition their customers because they will communicate with them primarily by email, with a few sporadic calls mixed in. The truth is most of them will be relieved. Why? Because they don’t have the time to talk to you either!

Time Log

Can you remember what you did five days ago?

Hey, I can’t remember what I did five hours ago! But when trying to improve your time management skills, you must be able to measure your actions against your results. We call this the ROI or return on investment within the investment world.

What is your return on investment for your time?

The only way to measure your business’s key aspects is to take periodic stock of your business.

Do this with a time log.

A time log is a simple notebook in which you record your business activities for a week and then compare your success with your actions.

If you find that your actions did not equal success, it may be time to reevaluate your time investments.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Talk soon