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The sun was peaking its head above the horizon as I walked my dog along the river. I wondered if my dog enjoyed the serenity of the early morning as much as I did. Abruptly, my peaceful thoughts were punted like a football as my dog spotted a scampering rabbit. He bolted towards it, almost taking my arm clean off as I struggled to hold onto his leash. Just moments after restraining my dog, I noticed a posted sign that read, "All dogs must be on leash." It was as if the park rangers knew just how distracted my dog could be. At any second he was ready to ditch me for some silly rabbit. The only way to keep him on the trail was to shorten his leash. Similarly, salespeople and business owners are often distracted by silly things. At the end of each week, we wonder where the time went, again. The problem is that we don't have a leash or somebody to rein us in when we get off track. Having an autonomous job or state-of-mind means we must be responsible for shortening our own leash if we want sales success. While we strive towards bigger goals, bigger sales, and bigger paychecks, we fail to realize that these outcomes take a series of small steps to achieve. It is the smaller steps that must be accomplished TODAY before anything bigger can happen. Instead of setting goals that require action from things outside our immediate influence, we need to set goals for the actions required to get there. In fact, let's stop calling them "goals;" that word has lost its meaning. A goal has become something that we work towards, something that we would like to achieve but not always do. Instead, let's call them "musts." You must make 100 phone calls this week, you must exercise three times this week, and you must finish that book you started three months ago. You must do it this week. To start the week off right, schedule a one hour meeting with yourself every Monday morning. Get yourself a sales journal, sit with your morning coffee and evaluate and plan all by yourself. The Monday morning meeting works like this: First, review all entries in your sales journal starting with the previous Monday. In these entries you will find last week's musts. In your journal, answer whether or not you accomplished your weekly musts. If your must was to make 100 phone calls, did you? There is NO gray area here; either you did or didn't. If you didn't, then write that you failed making 100 phone calls. When you fail, evaluate why you failed, and use that to establish a plan for the coming week. If the must was just too many phone calls to make, adjust the number. If you simply gave up because it was frustrating, good, explore why you felt frustrated. Then, come up with a plan to overcome the frustration this week. Go through every must that you set for yourself. Celebrate the ones that you accomplished and harshly coach yourself on the ones that you didn't. The key to establishing the coming week's plan is to only set out to do things that you have absolute control over. Don't say, "I must close that big sale this week," because that may very well be outside your control. It is far too easy to make excuses or talk yourself out of getting things done. Instead of becoming distracted with little things that don't support the bigger picture, aim for small steps that lead you toward those bigger aspirations. You don't need a posted sign to remind you of that leash (and if you do, this is it). Shorten the leash yourself and you'll stay on the path towards sales success. Tom Richard conducts seminars on sales and customer service topics nationwide. Tom is also the author of Smart Salespeople Don't Advertise: 10 Ways to Outsmart Your Competition With Guerilla Marketing, and publishes a free weekly ezine on selling skills titled Sales Muscle. To subscribe to this free weekly ezine go to http://www.tomrichard.com/subscribe
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