“The most prominent things in the center of that image are the word Hard Work and Focus.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 151
How would you devise a training plan to build your work ethic and focus?
Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I’ve got a thought for you. This idea may not be fully thought through because I literally came up with it this morning in the shower after a particularly hard workout.
This thought came as I was thinking about the level of hard work and focus required to perform at peak levels in combination with the training I’m working through as I build up to a triathlon late this summer.
So let’s start with the hard work and focus. For those of you who are already on the listener list, you saw the word cloud that visually showed the top traits and themes of all of the top performers I’ve interviewed on Sales Success Stories that I emailed on May 21st. If you’d like to see that word cloud just join the listener list at DailySales.Tips and reply to the welcome email asking me to send you the word cloud.
The most prominent things in the center of that image are the words Hard Work and Focus. Now here’s the thing. If you see that, or you hear one of the stories that really exemplifies that trait. Ian Bembenek, for example, is working a strict, hyper-focused, 8 hour day and outselling the #2 performer by 2 to 1. If you hear that and decide, I’m going to give that a try. That’s kind of like deciding that you’re going to get up off the couch and run a Marathon this weekend and qualify for the Boston Marathon. It’s not going to happen. Putting out that kind of performance takes a minimum of several months of effort if you already have a strong base and a ton of natural talent. For the rest of us, you’re probably looking at a couple of years of training.
Which brings me to my triathlon training, but you can really substitute any type of endurance sports training. The programs are all the same. Typically they’re several months long and their primary features are a steady build in volume and consistency. There’s no magic or secret involved, it just requires methodical execution and over time it’s nearly automatic that you’ll achieve your goal.
So let’s put those two ideas together. If you want to develop a world class level of worth ethic and focus you need to find a way to build up to it. This is where this particular idea starts to fizzle a bit because I don’t have that training plan for you, but perhaps it’s something we can work on together. There are now two different ways you can join the conversation. In either case, the best initial starting point is at DailySales.Tips/151 you can leave a comment there OR we’ve started sharing all of these tips in transcribed video form on the Daily Sales Tips page on LinkedIn. So we’re going to start linking those together on the website, but you can also follow the tips if you click over to DailySales.Tips/LinkedIn. That’s the other place that you’re welcome to comment.
How would you devise a training plan to build your work ethic and focus? My initial thought here is that interval training is your friend. First, learn to manage yourself in short bursts. It’s been suggested that the most productive work interval is 52 minutes followed by a 17-minute break. Maybe you work your way up to that. Just to make the math a bit cleaner, perhaps you revert to a 45-minute work interval followed by a 15-minute rest and over time stack a series of those together.
Remember that with any training plan, rest and recovery are also key. You can’t sprint all the time, that’s a recipe for overtraining and injury or in a professional sense let’s call it burnout and depression. But if you can build up to it you can probably sustain an effort that’s even faster than the speed that most people sprint. Elite Marathon Runners will run an entire race at sub-five-minute miles. I’ll tell you right now that that’s faster than I can sprint almost any distance.
Anyway, that’s my preliminary thought. What do you think? I’m really interested in your thoughts on this, because I’ve thought for years about how you might be able to translate a marathon training plan that can get just about anybody off the couch to completing a marathon into a similar plan that can take an average sales performer to world-class level performance through a simple, methodical plan that builds volume in a sustainable way over time.
Again, join us at DailySales.Tips/151 and follow these conversations on LinkedIn at DailySales.Tips/LinkedIn.
Thanks for listening and come back tomorrow for another great sales tip!
Let’s start including a link to the LinkedIn post as well… After you share the video on LinkedIn if you click the three dots at the top right there’s an option to “Copy link to post.” Use that and on the blog post link to something like: “See this tip and comment on LinkedIn” (or something like that).