How do you know at the end of the day if you had a good day? Most people try to be busy all day, so they don’t feel guilty for not doing enough. And when the day is over and they can tell their partners or themselves, “I had a very busy day today!” it makes them feel good.

The problem is that no one cares if you are busy or not, they care about results. Although for a lot of people keeping busy will secure their salary for a little more time, but at the end of the day most people get paid for results not for time, especially if they are in sales.

Some people came up with a concept that the definition of work is sitting behind a piece of furniture known as a desk. But when you really think about it, you will see that the opposite is true. When you sit at your desk with you computer screen in front of you, and piles of papers all over the place, you are almost paralyzed, and your brain stops working.

Think about it… when was the last time that you got an email from a prospect asking for a sale? Or, when was the last time when a customer interrupted you playing solitaire and asked if you can sell him something?

Now, for some jobs (like your assistant and staff) people have to work from a desk, because they do “deskwork” for a living, and they get paid for deskwork. But when you work in an area that pays for results, like sales or any executive position, there is no need for an office, and there is no need to be busy. You get rewarded for the results that you produce regardless of whether it took you two minutes or the whole day.

As a sales person you get paid for getting new prospects, and turning them into clients. And the best way to do that is to go out and meet people. If you just go to your existing clients and talk to them—about them—you will get more business and introductions to new people, which will turn into more deals and more cash at the end of the month.

One of the best ways to meet this challenge is a concept that I learned from Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach. He recommends dividing your week into three types of days: working days, buffer days and free days.

• A working day means that you do only those activities which bring you money, i.e., seeing people and making calls. You cannot go into your office. You have to go out and do an activity that brings you money.
• A buffer day is a full day where you prepare for the working days, paper work and education etc. You know it’s a buffer day and you do only those activities.
• A free day is a 24-hour period in which you don’t do any activity related to work, you can use those days for leisure and family activities.

The most important thing is to block the days in your calendar at the beginning of the week or month and stick to it. If feels very strange in the beginning because you are not getting the comfortable feeling of being busy, but if you stick to it, your life will never be the same.

EXERCISE OF THE WEEK
Sit down for 10 minutes and divide your activities into working days and buffer days. Then mark your calendar for the next two weeks, try to have 3 working days 2 buffer days and 2 free days each week. And see what happens.
Warning: you might feel tempted to step into the office in a working day just for a minute. Don’t do it!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Failures are divided into two classes – those who thought and never did and those who did and never thought” John Charles Sak

QUESTION OF THE WEEK
“What stops you from getting what you want?”

SALES TIP OF THE WEEK
Call your own telephone and leave yourself a message. Then listen to it…. “Would you call back if you were a prospect listening to this message?” If the answer is no, keep changing your tone, speed and words until you are confident that you would call back.

© 2008 – 2011, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.