A business without focus falters
Most people will just take what comes their way, reacting to the pulse of business as it comes to them. Unfortunately, reaction has a price. You could be busy until clients stop coming to you, then have to wait until the next client shows up. This waiting can be cyclical, it may catapult you into an extended slump or last so long that you have to close you’re business. Or if you have a steady sales volume that keeps you running, eventually you’re be suffering with adrenaline fatigue. Adrenaline fatigue is an illness that can take years to recover from. Managing your personal energy resources as a business owner is a must to achieve the sales results you want.
The cost of reaction is unwanted business stress
If you are in a state of reaction in your business, it will limit your income capacity. It’s frustrating to work hard and not have any results over a long period of time. This frustration makes it hard to get up in the morning and move on to new things. It will take time away from those areas of your life that are important to you such as family and friends, personal hobbies and recharge time. Eventually, your relationships and your life balance will be out perspective creating large amounts of stress to deal with. All that this extra stress does is increase the drain on your energy resources, causing you to feel more fatigued than before. Take the time to keep on course; in the long run you’ll succeed much faster.
Coaching steps to stop reaction
- Reaction – The first thing you will need to do is find out what you are reacting to. Typically, this will be driven by a request or interruption from someone else. You may find someone standing at the side of your desk with something they need to ask, or you may get a phone call from a client that wants to meet. The problem is not the coworker or the client, rather it’s that you have not defined your time. You are too accessible and therefore people will interrupt you.
- Time block – The next step is to designate specific times in your business calendar for the things that are important in your business. These would include times for prospecting, follow-up, creative time, production time, and client time. These times need to be set and blocked off in your calendar.
- Train co-workers and employees – Now you need to train all the people that interrupt you about your new system. Let them know how the system works and what constitutes a real emergency worthy of being interrupted. Expect that there will be a number of attempts to go back to the old way of doing things. Stick to your plan and don’t allow anyone to change your plan.
- Training clients – With clients, you will have to spend more time educating them before you make the changes and before asking them for permission to change your relationship with them. The best way to lose a client is to change your relationship agreement without their consent. If you discuss this with them, and make agreements as to how you can maintain proper business and sales service with them, most will readily understand. As a leadership step, we start all our new client relationships with a discussion on how the clients can reach us if needed and how long they can expect it will take for them to receive a reply. After we have set this up, we ask the client if we need to make any changes or additions and if not, we get them to agree to our communication style.
To succeed in business or sales, you must master your communication. Unnecessary interruptions will reduce your work capacity by at least 30%. Take control of how you handle your time and increase your productivity.