Focus on the things that matter

- The first thing you need to do is refocus your mind on to only the things that matter. It's so easy to become a busy fool and make yourself look and feel busy, but not actually be moving forward. Here's a story to help put that into context. Two salesmen meet in the lift at the end of the day, one says to the other "How's your day been?" And the other salesman says "It's been fantastic, I've made 60 calls, I've put two posts on social media, I've sent 30 emails, I've up with a new line to finish cold calls with. I've rearranged my desk and I've organized the whole sales team to go and have lunch together. How about you?" And the other salesman says, "Yeah, I didn't sell anything either." Now the busy salesman is doing things that might result in sales, but the meaning of the story is to not get caught up in false statistics. You can only do this by having an honest conversation with yourself and to adjust your focus on what's important as well as what's urgent. So I've explained important versus urgent in another of my videos, but in short, important tasks will have an impact on your world if they're done or not done. For example, finding new leads, closing business, or clearing down admin tasks. Whereas urgent tasks come with a deadline. So for example, meeting targets in time, getting proposals out, or remembering to call customers when they're due to enter the market again. So make sure you're balancing the tasks and not only doing the important or only doing the urgent. If you only do the important, you miss deadlines if you only do the urgent, then you won't move forwards. So firstly, your time, what are you doing with it? Are you spending loads of time researching when you could be doing less? For example, spending 10 minutes per prospect looking at their website, their LinkedIn, their Facebook, their Twitter, the news, that financial performance, or just spending two minutes looking at the company who you're targeting and what they do. Then if you're doing the tasks correctly, are they the right tasks? Are you spending too long replying to emails intermittently when you could leave it until the end of the day, which is doing the urgent. Then, as a result, not doing your prospecting and falling behind on lead generation, which is missing the important. I would suggest scheduling approximately 60% of your time to selling, 20% of your time to researching and 20% of time to doing your admin. And if your account manager, then maybe do less selling and more admin, and if you're a lead generator, then do more selling and less admin. Play with them and see what works for you, but be honest with yourself and balance important and urgent. So the only other thing is who you're targeting. Are you really targeting the people that are definitely going to buy from you? If yes, then will it be quicker or easier than selling to a different market? Focus energy where it matters, where you that you'll get traction. Think about this, what if you were at a networking event trying to sell cars? And I said to you "That group of people over there are car buyers. That guy buys classic cars, that guy buys broken down cars for scraps, and that lady buys everyday family cars and sells them on again, and so on." Would you definitely talk to that group or would you shake the hands of everyone else there first? So the correct answer is you beeline for the car people because you know that they're going to buy from someone, why not make it you? They understand the market, they understand the value that you bring and they know a good deal when they see one. So isn't this the whole reason we're all here, while you're watching this course, to sell more? So be honest with yourself and be smart with your time.