Like having the occasional slice of cake doesn’t appear to be doing any us any harm occasionally skipping our daily and weekly prospecting or account management activities doesn’t appear to be doing any harm towards creating full funnel freedom. That’s because we don’t have a visual reminder of the cost of our task avoidance.
Early in my Sandler career my coach and I discovered that every time I dialed the phone, my primary prospecting method back then, I “made” $89.32 no matter what happened. Conversely every time I avoided making a dial, I cost myself $89.32. To remind myself of this I put a jar with $89.32 next to my phone so I could see the cost of task avoidance sitting on my desk.
Putting a jar on my desk with $89.32 worked because I’m pain motivated. I was more motivated by the thought of losing the $89.32 than gaining the $89.32.
A quick way to gauge if you’re pain motivated or pleasure motivated is think about the last time something positive happened while prospecting like booking a discovery meeting with a prospect. If you’re pain motivated you tend stop, even briefly, because you avoided the pain of not booking a meeting. On the flip side, if you’re pleasure motivated you can’t wait to get another discovery meeting in the calendar. History tells me that most of us want to believe we’re pleasure motivated because it sounds better, but we’re really pain motivated if we make an honest assessment of our motivation after something positive happens.
No matter our motivation, keeping momentum going in our prospecting (even during the summer), is easier if we find a “trap” that resonates with us. For me it was the jar with $89.32 next to my phone. For others it’s posting a picture of someone who doesn’t believe in them (and expects them to fail) where they can see it daily and for other’s it’s creating a vision board fully of things they want to have or do that’s posted in a prominent place in their workspace (even if that’s the screen saver on their laptop and/or phone).
We can also stick to our proactive prospecting plan by creating momentum early in our day. Our clients often use “3x9,” which means they make three prospecting calls before 9am. One of our clients, who was shifting from a strictly account management role into a dual prospecting/account management role used the “3-for-1” format, which was making one call to a current client for every three prospecting calls, to double their book of business in about 14 months. The call to the current client could happen at any point, but the ratio was three prospecting calls for everyone one call to a current client.
Without a visual representation of the cost of task avoidance we’ll give ourselves permission for task avoidance occasionally then pay for it later when our funnel looks like a pencil and we’re frantically trying to fill it.
Until next time… go sell something.
