“Set the boundaries.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 1264
Do you set boundaries?
Join the conversation below and check out the links!
1256: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities #1 – Expectations
1257: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities #2 – Tools
1263: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities #3 – Plan
Rethink The Way You Sell Podcast
Jeff’Bajorek on LinkedIn
[email protected]
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jeff Bajorek is back with part 4 of his 8 part series on why your team isn’t creating more opportunities. Here it is:
Jeff Bajorek: 8 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Creating More Opportunities.
#4: They don’t have the right boundaries.
Weak salespeople will tell you they don’t have the time to prospect because they have too many other things to do, accounts to manage, clients to keep happy, CRM systems to update, meetings to go to. The list goes on. But level with me here. Is there a more important aspect of your job than creating new opportunities? Look, there’s never been a business problem that hasn’t been solved or cured by more revenue. And there certainly hasn’t been a revenue problem ever. It can’t be cured by more pipeline. This is your job.
So what could possibly take precedence over the most important thing that you have to do? This is not a time management issue. This is a priority issue. This is a boundary issue. There’s never going to be a lack of distractions. It’s going to be up to you to have the boundaries and the discipline to uphold those boundaries. This is where the rubber meets the road.
So are you time blocking? Are you protecting time on your calendar where you’re letting anybody who has visibility to your calendar see that you are busy? Are you planning a flag in those time slots on those days to remind yourself of how important this is? I like to ask the question, could your calendar be used as evidence against you in a court of law to convict you of being in sales? Look at what you make time for. Are you making time for the most important things? And then secondarily, are you disciplined enough to keep those time blocks? Most people aren’t. They’ll put them in there. But as soon as they get any possible distraction, that’s just an opportunity to not do that thing that you don’t want to do. That’s a discipline issue. That’s a boundary issue.
So what’s the fix? Block time. Maintain those blocks. Eliminate distractions. They have apps for your computer and your phone to shut off notifications, even shut off access to certain websites or apps. You have ‘do not disturb’ functions on your phone. You can shut the whole thing off. If you want to accept you should be using it, right? That’s a very valuable tool. But think of all the help that’s out there to eliminate those distractions. Use them. Make sure the people that you’re working with, or working near anyway know that you cannot be disturbed. Know that there’s nothing more important right now than at least for the next hour, you making calls, sending messages, trying to create new opportunities.
And this idea that you can’t take an hour off from being responsive to other people, if you were sitting in front of your biggest customer for the next hour. You wouldn’t stop to check your email, would you? Let’s stop pretending that creating new opportunities is not more important than sitting with your best customer. Where do you think your best customer came from? That’s your job. Don’t abdicate that role. Set the boundaries. Keep them. It’s easier said than done. But this is where you have to put in the work. This is where you have to be more disciplined than the next person on your team. If you want to become the top performer, you know you can. I believe in you. Now go do the work.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Jeff and ultimately, links to the rest of this series, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1264. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!