Making time for ‘things’ to get done in your life and in your business is just so important that I had to follow on last week’s thought this week. In short, YOU MUST MAKE TIME for the various parts of your business and your life and program them into a timetable of your week, often referred to as an Ideal Week or Default Diary. Failure to plan time for all elements of your business or your life will most definitely ensure a long term failure.
STOP MAKING EXCUSES. We all have the same amount of time. YOU DO HAVE TIME to get things done and are living in the extremely short term if you don’t incorporate time for the ‘Not Urgent but Important’ work.
Let’s look at an electrician. The electrician says he has no time for anything except going out and carrying out more electrical work. He fills up his week with electrical work. What is he not doing? How about following up new leads, getting quotes done, following up those quotes, sending out invoices and collecting money. When are they going to get done? Let alone after sales service, looking after A grade clients to get them coming back, or training new staff so they can get the work done. I have worked with businesses that have doubled and tripled the business in 12 months by simply MAKING A DECISION to get the aforementioned steps done, instead of just constantly doing more and more.
If this is not getting through to you, you need to think about one of the fundamental philosophies ActionCOACH preaches (yes we do preach). That philosophy is GET RID OF THE I KNOW Attitude. You have an I Know attitude and you are not Participating properly in your own business if you are not open to making the decision to set time aside to carry out all the necessary parts of your business.
One of my clients is part of one of the world’s most successful direct sales force. One ingredient of their success is that they take time every day to conduct sales training before sending the team in the field. Yes, every day. They could go in the field for over an hour more each day and get sales in that hour. They realise that the key is conversion rate, not simply more leads, so they take time every day to train their already trained people to be better at sales. At the end of the day they analyse their test and measure sheets and debrief to work out how to get even better. Guess why they are the best in the world.
YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO NOT MAKE THE TIME. Your choice, but if you don’t change you will be doing exactly the same thing next year, and the next, and the next…
