“Maybe the most important thing that I did well in advance as I was planning this trip was to book a couple of additional days out of the office after I’m actually back from the trip.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 917
Do you have a great vacation prep hack?
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. As we get into peak vacation season and as I get ready to take some time off myself, I thought I’d share a few ideas with you that help me prepare for fully unplugged time away.
Maybe the most important thing that I did well in advance as I was planning this trip was to book a couple of additional days out of the office after I’m actually back from the trip. This way, my out-of-office message provides air cover so I can more casually get caught back up without running headfirst into a wall of meetings and other demands so I can come back relaxed and not overwhelmed. We tend to go at it pretty hard with activities when we travel in my family. So this is quite literally that vacation from my vacation that we all joke about. This has made a huge difference for me in the past in actually achieving the whole rest and rejuvenation impact most of us are looking for from our vacations in the first place.
The rest is just prep. I’ll review my pipeline and think about anything that might come up while I’m out. From there, I’ll set up a review session with my VP to go through that list and where it makes sense, I’ll proactively give people a heads up and introduce them to my VP who is also my backup while I’m away. This is also a great opportunity to confirm status and ask what might be needed in the time that I’m away so we can get in front of any potential issues and keep deals progressing and avoid losing any momentum.
The last step is the out-of-office message, and I take this pretty seriously. Since thousands of you are on the listener list and get my weekly emails, I get to see a lot of out-of-office messages. Almost all of them are boring. And I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but I try to have some fun with it. I’ll inject some of my personality and sense of humor because I want to make an impression. It is so easy to stand out with these because the bar is so low. I’m also going to use it to set expectations. And this is kind of the normal stuff. I’ll let people know when I’ll be back, who they can contact while I’m away. And I’m usually pretty aggressive about being clear that I’m completely unplugging while I’m away with my family and won’t be opening email until I return. For me, this actually takes discipline, but I really try to limit myself to one quick skim a day at the most. It’s even better if I only take a quick peek every few days and who knows, maybe I’ll make it all the way through without checking email because I’m only going to be away for a week. And it’s not like there aren’t other ways to reach me if something is truly, truly urgent.
What about you? Do you have a great vacation prep hack? I would love to hear about it. You can email me at [email protected]. You might even get an interesting out-of-office message. Just don’t be surprised if I don’t get back to you for a week or so. You know, you can also submit this as your own Daily Sales Tips. If you go to DailySales.Tips/Submit, that includes all of the instructions so that you can get featured on this podcast, and featuring listeners on this podcast is one of my very favorite things to do. So you should do that.
Anyway, I appreciate you listening to the show, and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip.