Hesitate to make sales calls? Rushing to lose money?

Procrastination: the great wealth thief. We’re not talking about reading important journals or writing thank you notes. How many games of solitaire do you play before getting on the phone? How many idiotic emails do you receive? And forward? Time wasters, that great sucking sound you hear coming from your wallet. When you hesitate to make a call, you hurry to lose extra income.

Want to know how expensive a computer game is? Forget the price. Multiply the number of times played by the number of minutes each time and the number of business days. For example, 10 minutes x 2 times x 250 work days = 5000 minutes/year. That’s more than one working day per year.

Are you an average sales person? Above average? That’s 1000 prospect calls per year. If you meet three prospects for a sales interview out of ten calls, that’s 300 sales calls – more than one per day. If you sell one out of three of these prospects, that’s 100 extra sales per year.

What’s your average commission? Let’s use $100 for this example – $10,000 per year to play solitaire. Are you hesitating to make calls, getting “mentally ready”, or just rushing to lose money? And yes, you can make four more prospect calls per day.

When your inner doubts bully your dialing finger, the delay costs you money, commission, prestige, even vacations and prizes. Why do we let this happen?

Rituals mollify our subconscious mind. Do you have a morning routine to ready for work? Professional athletes are notoriously superstitious on game day. Completing the routine assures our brains we’re ready to go.

But has the ritual always been the same? How do we learn these habits? How do we create better habits? Rituals change over time. If you grow a beard, your shaving and grooming habits change. If you shave your head, you alter your showering technique. So, changing goals or styles lead to a change of habit. Intrigued?

Change your morning ritual and make four sales calls to prospects to replace whatever your particular time waster is… crossword puzzle? Origami? Listening to the radio waiting for your favorite song? Delete these routines and replace them with starting your marketing correspondence as early as possible. At the end of the day, you can decide to work later if needed, but you can’t decide to work earlier.

Habits are replaced, not broken. The following rules help you replace time wasting habits with productive ones. Follow these rules and sell time-effectively.

Good Habit #1

Set a time to write and answer personal emails, texts, social networking, and similar activities for the end of the day only, and strictly abide by this schedule. Your social life is important, but not urgent.

When you behave as though social networking is more important than marketing calls, in your mind, it will become more urgent. Prioritize marketing first.

Some psychologists refer to “tomorrow thinking”, as in its best to start this task later. If you consider prospecting calls onerous, you are more likely to hesitate to make that first call. Prospecting gets you closer to a sale. This task is most important.

Decide when to work and how many hours. Stick to this schedule and do not let time wasters creep in.

Good Habit #2

Write notes confirming meetings, e-mail clients, check your calendar and call list, then start calling. Call the entire list. Replace that time wasting behavior with morning organizational tasks. They are easy, non-confrontational, and very useful. This activity can be part of the mental commute to work, personal business to business.

Activity decreases worry and discomfort. Worry depends upon a negative prediction of future events. How well do you predict the future?

Excuses like it may be a bad time to call or suppose I have the wrong name, or number, delay calling. This bad habit is contingency tomorrow thinking. It may be inconvenient to call later too; nobody can predict the optimal time.

Here’s a prediction: if you waste 5000 minutes per year in non-productive, time wasting pursuits, you’ll be $10,000 poorer.

Self deception is a powerful mental tool. Hesitators tend to use the deception to not act; but it is just as powerful in focusing on tasks. Once you have a useful “begin work” ritual, such as opening your email and answering only business related correspondence, or better yet, isolating the two functions using two email servers, your mind will be all business.

Ironically, when you use the end of the day personal correspondence strategy, this will mentally trigger your work to social mental commute. True recreation begins.

Good Habit #3

Do not joke about your slow starts or hesitation in calling prospects.

Joking distances the joker from the severity of the procrastination, unless you find a joke to fit the loss of income punch line,

Admit this hesitation is problematic, and then return to Good Habit #1.

Successful marketing and sales require routinely prospecting for new opportunities. Unfortunately, calling is often the most neglected, delayed, or avoided activity although potentially the most important.

Train your mind to understand and focus on this activity. Think about the cost of playing computer games or doing crossword puzzles when hesitating to begin or complete your call list. And by the way, your prospects and clients deserve your undivided attention.

Don’t rush to lose money.