“Happy Sunday” I hope all is well and everyone had a great weekend so far. I just ducked into my office for a few hours preparation for the week, and the month ahead. Being a commission salesperson it’s a new month. “Yay me!” Basically the clock is reset the production board empty and everyone starts from zero. Here is when some degree of mental toughness comes in. Matters not a whit of what you did last month, and for sure every salesperson wants to start a new month with the wind at your back as it were.

Just like a great Chef painstaking prepares his dishes for hours before cooking, the selection, cutting slicing and dicing seasoning marinating etc. So must the salesperson. The farmer spends countless hours preparing the ground for planting to get a maximum yield. So must the salesperson. Steve Covey in his great book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” talks about sharpening the saw. Some say it was George Washington who coined this phrase others say it was Abe Lincoln not going to debate that here it’s the meaning that counts. “Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree I would spend the first four sharpening my axe” So must the salesperson. Preparation

One cannot build a lasting career on luck. Natural talent and natural skill will only take you so far. Skill and talent doesn’t work unless you do. Rich man and poor man each only have 24 hours a day to work with, and once that times is gone we can ever get it back. We see it in sales organisations all over the place in the numbers. A person can get lucky and be the “Salesman of the Month” That one big client ordered, the sun the stars and the moon were all aligned in your favour etc. I am here to tell you that salesperson is rarely salesperson of the year. Salesperson of the year bills steady every month, and does the not so sexy thing every week. Preparation.

Today I am making lists of who I plan to call and at what times. I like to do Business/Client Development in the morning and Headhunting/Recruiting in the afternoon. There is a lot of flexibility here and all depends on the individual and what they prefer. I have worked with a great many people who Recruited in the morning and did biz dev in the afternoon.

Success at anything cannot be left to chance. Olympic athletes train for 4 years just to compete for 1 maybe 2 events. The majority of events they compete in are a few seconds or minutes in duration. 1000’s of hours of preparation they endure just so they can compete for those few precious seconds.  Now I have my lists made up of who to call and what times so Tuesday morning at 10:15 I don’t have to guess what to do. I know what to do as it’s all laid out in front of me. I don’t have to guess, I don’t have to stress as I am working a plan. I don’t have to search the web and do the research when I’m supposed to be on the phone.

“Happy Hunting”