We are all busy. We start our days already with too much on our plates. Turn on the computer, hundreds on emails come in. Tweets, texts, phone calls all compete for our attention. We look at our schedules, meeting after mindless meeting, phone calls, web conferences.
We struggle with organizing our time, dealing with interruptions, juggling schedules and priorities. At the end of the day, week, month, we wonder where the time has gone. We’ve made some progress, but often we seem further behind.
Too often, it seems like habit or momentum guides our behavior. “This is the way we’ve always done it.”
Or we react—our managers tell us to do something–make more calls. We react to the customer, or our competitor.
Seductively, we suddenly realize we are out of control, we are no longer achieving our goals.
Then we think about our intentions and being intentional.
Intention: A course of action that one intends to follow.
Intentional: Done deliberately or purposefully.
What if we started to be intentional about what we do? For example:
- What if before we picked up the phone for that prospecting call, we had researched, prepared, and had a clear goal we knew would be impactful to the customer?
- What if we had a written plan for every face to face meeting with our customers? What if we took the time to establish that plan–examining how we can leverage each meeting to compress the sales cycle? What if we focus on the value we create for the customer in each call? What if we took the time to debrief ourselves after the call, learning how to improve our ability to execute?
- What if for each deal, we have a clear strategy to achieve both our customer’s and our desired outcomes? Our strategy is based on what we know to be best practice, a sales process that is aligned with the customer buying process.
- What if we changed our sales approach to focus on the customer and how we create value, rather than pitching our products?
- What if we made sure we had a high quality pipeline, eliminating all opportunities that are wishful thinking, outside our sweet spot and not real? How would this impact our ability to achieve our goals?
- What if we took the time to understand the key drivers and metrics within our territories, establishing metrics as guidelines to make sure we are on target?
- What if we realized that we can’t stand still in our own personal development, that true professionals focus on continuous improvement and development? What if we took ownership for our own development plan, continuously learning and improving?
- What if we took the time to help our colleagues, coaching some to help them improve their own effectiveness?
- What if we took the time to give back within our own communities? What if we found an organization or cause that we supported and volunteered some of our time?
- What if we actually took some time to exercise and eat well, rather than setting and breaking goals?
- What if we set fewer goals for ourselves, but made sure we achieved them?
- What if we focused on being purposeful and deliberate about everything we do, rather than just reacting?
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