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Four simple steps to achieving better results
By Colin J Campbell
It’s 2017! Canada’s 150th anniversary. These ideas were developed from the perspective of a sales oriented profession, however they can be applied to any profession or business. Regardless of what the job description knowing when you are going to work, what the objective is and having a process to achieve it just makes good business sense. Four simple steps to achieving better results.
1. Block out all the days that you will not be available to be actively at work for the year – The assumption is that you will work five days a week for about 50 weeks a year, however in reality you will only be at work about 42 weeks. See for yourself.
Block off all the days that you will not be at work on your calendar or planner.
Get your spouses input so you don’t miss any special family events.
After deducting statutory holidays, time for continuing education and family vacations, time you have set a side to work on your business not in your business, you will be surprised how close to the 42 weeks you will actually be at work.
Use coloured markers, red for days away, green for workdays. Make your planner more effective by clearly marking the days of each week that you will be at work.
Armed with the information of when you won’t be at work you can begin to plan how to use the days you will be at work effectively.
2. Determine what your income goal is for the year – Treat this as a benchmark rather than something that is etched in stone. If you follow these four steps this benchmark will be surpassed but it is important to have a figure in mind to measure your performance against. Use your last two years income as a guideline with a realistic increase.
Divide the benchmark by 12 to determine the monthly goal and divide that by how many days you will be actively at work in your business each month to determine the daily objective.
Write your daily, weekly and monthly production goal on the top of your planner.
Measure your production against your objective. You may not hit your goal in the first week that’s okay. Don’t be critical, it is your personal objective and no one is going to criticize your performance.
Keeping an accurate log of how you are doing has a beneficial effect on your performance. It comes back to how the subconscious mind works on a problem, there is no easy explanation it just happens.
3. A systematic approach to planning your week. – This is a simple system to help you focus on what is important each week. The concept is based on the work of Dr. Aaron Hemsley. Hemsley determined that most professionals in sales roles focus on the result, which leads to mediocrity and failure. By focusing on the activity of making contacts not on sales the emphasis no longer creates the same levels of tension, which is what led to failure.
Rejection is painful, no matter who you are and how seasoned you are it is human nature to take rejection personally. Our subconscious will decide that the way to avoid the pain is to not do the activity. It becomes less painful to do paperwork rather than make a phone call or go see someone and ask for an appointment. This type of activity is counterproductive and leads to failure. Many a promising career has ended in failure because of the pain of rejection.
Dr. Hemsley’s method of focusing on making a contact relieves the pain, rejection no longer is an issue. You can talk about the weather or what is important to the other person, it doesn’t matter what you say just that you make contact. His method requires that you change a habit and that does require effort.
These are the simple steps of the Hemsley method:
Use a business card to record how many contacts you make for a week, ticks on the back of the card for every contact you make. It is simple and easy to do.
At the end of the week add up the ticks and average the result.
This number is your goal for the following four weeks. EG. If your total is 15 that is thee per day and that is your goal for the following four weeks.
It is important that you do this exercise because it needs to be your number. You are going to change a habit and it takes four weeks to do that. If you don’t achieve the objective and miss the goal for a week, start over, do it for four consecutive weeks. Keep a record, yes on a business card.
Once you start to use this system you will increase the number of appointments you have each week almost like magic. When you are no longer focused on making a sale but focused on making contacts you will be surprised, people will start calling you for appointments. No one wants to talk to a salesman but everyone wants to talk to someone who is perceived as being a facilitator and problem solver and when you are no longer worried about making a sale and more concerned about your client’s problems that is the impression you will convey. You will find yourself having conversations with people in coffee shops or on the street that lead to appointments. Like magic.
4. One final step – the motivator
At the end of each month, divide all the income you generated in the month by the number of contacts you made. Now you know what each contact is worth. Put that number on the top of your planner where you can see it everyday.
This is not so much to measure success but to reinforce how essential it is to focus on contacts not on sales, it didn’t matter what the contact was for, it represented the same value in terms of compensation as the next one.
Can you now see the value? When you take the pressure off your daily performance you can relax and be more receptive to the needs of your clients and prospects and thus you will do more.
For some of you this four-step plan may be too simple. You may feel that setting a production goal and then focusing on making contacts rather than sales is counter productive. However, a goal is the target how you achieve it is the process and the process is where you need to put your emphasis. If that process is a simple system that works without requiring a lot of effort it makes achieving the goal much easier.
The less complex the system the easier it is to make it a regular habit, something you do daily without thinking and because you already know well in advance what you are going to be doing every day, week, and month of the year there are no surprises. You can work the weeks you planned to work, be highly effective and take the time to sharpen the saw or vacation and spend time with your family guilt free and stress free.
– Colin J. Campbell CFP, CLU is an independent financial advisor and managing partner of Guidance Planning Strategies Ltd, in Cranbrook. Serving the Kootenays since 1995, Guidance Planning Strategies focuses on helping families and entrepreneurs create wealth and keep it for generations.
