I often heard :
“Salespeople are ready to do everything to earn money.”
It makes sense. There isn’t a better relationship between effort and gain than in sales.
Still, I desagree.
Even salespeople don’t do everything and often don’t do obvious things to increase their earning potential. The issue comes mostly from our ability to distinguish and act on the “Non-urgent but important” activities. ( See Put First things, first)
Photo by Marvin von Hagen on Unsplash
The ‘Non-Urgent but Important’ Habits that has helped me throughout my career.
I started my career as a salesman and worked my way up to the executive committee of a 5,000 people company. My first job was to find new customers.
Like everything in my life, I dig into the experience of others through books. After each meeting, I reflect on what I could improve.
After six months, I started to have the best results out of a dozen salespeople in my category.
Later, I was promoted to a role focused on building relationships with existing clients. At 24, I was the youngest among 100 experienced salespeople, yet within six months, I was achieving top results.
My methodology was duplicable. Salespeople started to approach me and asked :
“What is your secret?”
Beyond the Urgent and Important : The power of a few personal written words
One thing I did a lot of was write a few personal words for my clients.
I’m still using it in many situations. Things that work are often deceptively simple(see my investment strategy).
After each sales visit, where the customer was humanly good with me -whatever, the sales result was- I wrote a small card to thank that person for the friendly welcome.
Nothing too special. Three sentences with a bit of personalization. It took me 5 minutes per card.
Later in different jobs, I used to keep these writing habits with colleagues, bosses, employees, partners, “a few personal words” to thank them for anything special I was touched by.
I can’t count how many deeper relationships and millions in business I have built through these small habits.
The how?
I shared with my colleagues and even provided the how :
- Which type of card?
- An example of a writing card.
- How I batch my work to be more productive.
Despite that, I can’t recall one sales colleague who applied it with discipline over a long period. Some didn’t start, and others stopped, even though they began to increase their sales ratios.
Why did they not do it?
Not because they didn’t believe in it.
The main reason was that they were dying, like most of us, under their “Urgent and Important” tasks. They could not build space for their “Non-urgent but Important” activities like writing cards to their warmest prospects.
And as often, the “Non-Urgent but Important” habits are simple, look futile, but are crucial to our long-term success.
- Breathing exercises,
- Sleep one hour earlier,
- Daily walk, reading 15 minutes a day,
- Writing daily in our journal
- Understand first before being understood…
These habits are simple, and they lead to big results over time.
The challenge? We need to implement them proactively.
What “proactive habits” could you incorporate into your life?
See you soon.
Dror
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