There’s roughly 33 days left in 2011.  What will you do to maximize your results?  Will you fall pray to the holiday laziness, and buy into what your potential customers and colleagues excuses are? 

You know the ones I’m talking about.  Those people that tell you to call them after the holidays, or those that use the holidays as an excuse for their failures. 

Get real, there’s really only two major government holidays left.  Two days out of 33.  Let’s maximize the other 31 days to the best of our ability. 

If you want to increase your happiness, sales, wealth and influence, here’s a 12 step strategy to not only set yourself up for success the rest of this year, but to arm yourself to crush 2012.

1.       Raise your personal standards for how you’re going to live your life and build your business.

2.       Wake up an hour earlier each day. Read something short & inspirational, get some form of exercise – even if it’s just a walk around the block, and then re-write your goals & your daily action plan every morning.  This one will be your toughest, and likely the one most quit following through on.  Huge TIP – it’s the most important one of all!

3.       Stop using 5 different time management and CRM systems.  Pick one, commit to it, and make it work.  You can master one to your benefit, or be a slave and a failure to all 5 – you choose.

4.       Schedule block time for your action items, meetings, prospecting, and so on.

5.       Commit to connecting & building 100 new relationships in the next 30 days.  It’s easier than you think.

6.       Read two books to improve your skills and knowledge base

7.       Go find a sale or relationship you screwed up and fix it, or at a very minimum make peace

8.       List every last conceivable resource you have, and write out a plan to maximize each of them to build your business.  Some of them may seem insignificant to you, but to others they may make all the difference in getting a deal done.

9.       Run a 10/10/10 campaign.  If you don’t know what one is, call me and I’ll walk you through it.

10.   Send out a hand written note to all of your new contacts.  No one else will, and they will never forget it.

11.   Every night before bed, reread your goals and visualize them.  Your brain will come with creative ways to achieve them while you sleep

12.   Finally, while everyone else is out getting drunk and over-indulging this holiday season, do something constructive to improve someone else’s life.  You’ll be rewarded.

Success isn’t hard.  Sales aren’t hard.  Life isn’t hard.  Building effective teams isn’t hard.  Follow this 12 point plan, and you’ll see how much easier it is to win.

The holidays this time of year are filled with parties, joy, family, friendship, and gratitude.  It’s a time to really reflect on what’s important, and to celebrate with others.
This is wonderful, but it also presents a problem.  Too often, and for way to many people, they let their guards down and turn what amounts to 3 actual days, turned into two months of partying.   Essentially they take their eyes off the prize, and they relax their standards. 

So what’s the big deal?  It’s the holidays, come on Greg, relax.   Right?  WRONG!!!  Here’s what happens when you lower your standards for what’s acceptable during the holidays.

1. Sales drop
2. Profits drop
3. Professional relationships take a back seat
4. Opportunities get put on hold, and usually missed

Now, not everything is down.  Here’s what’s up.

1. Your waist line
2. Your cholesterol
3. Your stress and anxiety, because you’re not performing and now worried about your future

Fortunately, you have a choice.  Take charge of your life, and really celebrate the holidays for what they are, and use this as a time to succeed where 99.9% of the population fails miserably.

I love the holidays.  They are extremely important to me.  Spending time with my family and friends, giving sincere thanks and gratitude for all the amazing blessings in my life, and it’s also a time for me to really impact the lives of those I’m privileged to connect with. 

My challenge to you is this; ask yourself what and who you’re truly grateful for, what can you give thanks for, and whose lives can you make a difference in as result.  Do that, take action on that, and you’ll not change the lives of your customers and friends, but yours too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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What's your Wednesday plan?

Why Wednesday?  Well it's just as arbitrary as an other day of the week, and you already know why you're suppossed to have a plan on Monday.  The challenge is that you start out with the best of intentions on Monday morning, yet the interruptions and work-flow of the day can quickly derail your best laid plans.

It's easy to get off track, and let the demands of the moment interrupt your company and professional goals.  Before you know it, you're not making any progress towards them until you re-plan the following week and repeat this vicious cycle.

Here is a quick 5 step strategy you can implement to immediately change the course of your week and future:

1 - Schedule a meeting with yourself Tuesday afternoon or night for 20 minutes
2 - Do a quick assessment of where you're at, what you have on the schedule, & quickly review your goals.  By now you know what you can expect for the balance of the week
3 - Write out a list of 5 action items that will cause you to make progress achieving your goals
4 - Schedule them as meetings in open slots during the remainder of your week starting Wednesday morning - allowing for interuptions of course
5 - Share your plan with a colleague to hold yourself accountable

Having any plan beats no plan, but not taking action makes the plan worthless.  Set yourself up to succeed by having a Wednesday plan.  You still must work out the details on Sunday or Monday to make this happen.  But this simple and effective strategy will cause you to follow through regardless of what derails you on Monday morning.

One of my early mentors had a plaque hanging in his office that read, “Success is the result of Good Judgment.  Good Judgment is the result of Experience.  Experience is the result of Bad Judgment.”

I must have looked at that sign for months before I realized that it was true in every area of life.  What is bad judgment?  Is it a series of failures, or as Thomas Edison say, a series of successful ways not to achieve our desired outcome?

So, if we’re on the road to success, you should welcome whatever results you achieve and learn and adapt your approach from them.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in sales, management, a parent, etc.  What does matter is that you don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over; otherwise, you’re just committing insanity. 

You can’t manage and improve what you don’t measure, so here’s my recommendation to you: 

1.       Keep a journal or notepad with you at all times.

2.       Every time you make or attempt to make progress towards any goal, write down your outcome.

3.       Record your results and your approach. 

4.       Notice what and how you’re getting. 

5.       Didn’t get what you want, change your approach, but make sure you record it so you don’t make the same mistake twice. 

Now, from your recorded results you should have a solid journal full of strategies on how to accomplish a great number of outcomes.  Use these to propel your successes.  Oh, here’s one last tip if you’re in sales building relationships (and aren’t we all?) – Nothing says I love you more than either padding someone’s wallet or fixing problem for them. 

Look through your journal and see if you have discovered any possible solutions to a problem a client or prospect is facing and go help them solve it selflessly.  They’ll pay you back many times over in thanks.

Use your bad judgment to your advantage to achieve your success and help others along the way.  Give selflessly to others and you’ll build value far beyond what your competition could ever dream of.

When you have a prospect to follow up with, what do you do when you call them?

If you're like most "salespeople" then you're probably calling up and asking a silly non-value question such as; "just following up to see if have any more questions, or have you made a decision yet?"

Instead of calling your prospect & asking if they've made a decision - call & offer them some information of value to their business, life, and/or give them a referral. Be more than a typical salesperson.  Wake up, they know why you're calling them.  Don't pester them.  Be different, be original, be a "sales professional" - be their advocate, their cheerleader, their source of value beyond the sale.  Give more of yourself selflessly and they'll give to you.

TGIF, but not because it's time to check out for the weekend, loosen up your professional standards, and get ready for the Friday night and weekend party.  

How many people do you know, maybe even yourself, who relax on Fridays and don't put the same effort in as if it were a Monday or Tuesday?  
  
Fridays are an ideal time, the best time in fact to crush the competition. Most professionals are taking it easy and really not putting much of an effort in at all.  Even your clients and prospects are taking it easier for the most part.  So why aren't you taking advantage of this.  

Guards are down, and people are more apt to take a phone call, read an email, or escape for a coffee break.  This is an opportunity for you to get in front of that elusive prospect or customer and really deliver value to them.  Your competition is on break, so break into a new relationship and make it happen. 

The good news is you can change your Friday habits immediately. The great news is most of your competitors won't, and you'll win more often - period.