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I am not your guru. But…
I don’t do this much, but in this post I’m going to write about motivation and stuff in your head. In the last couple of posts I have talked about having goals and creating time blocks to do the most important work that will get you to those goals.
The problem is that without your mind in the right place it’s really unlikely you’re going to do a good job of tasks like prospecting that, since you’re in sales, will be the activities hanging out in those important time blocks you’ve created.
Prospecting is a rough sport. You get rejected A LOT. And if you’re close to a normal human, this causes frustration, stress and self-doubt. You want to be well-prepared mentally before you take this on.
Most of us are better-equipped to tackle the toughest work early in our day. As our energy wears down during the day it gets harder to tackle the tough stuff. So for most of us our prospecting time blocks should be in the morning.
If you’re going to do this prospecting early in your day, it’s a good idea to get yourself out of bed in the best way possible so you’re ready to boogie when your sales day begins.
It turns out there’s a bloke that has become a specialist in helping people get out of bed the right way. His name is Hal Elrod and he created something called The Miracle Morning. He’s even created a book especially for sales people called The Miracle Morning for Salespeople.
In my normal (Tim Ferriss-inspired) way I’ve tested out Hal’s concepts and I’ve found that many of them have indeed worked for me. Hal’s basic framework is called “life SAVERS”. SAVERS is of course an acronym. Here’s what it means:
- Silence: Silence basically means meditation. The more I ask around, the more I find other people are meditating. I myself I’m pretty hooked on the meditation app Headspace. This British bloke Andy Puddicombe talks you through each exercise and it only takes 10-minutes.
- Affirmations: These can seem a bit hokey but I have found they can boost my confidence. This is basically a case of writing down positive thoughts about yourself and repeating them daily. There are apps for this too. I have one called ThinkUp that I have yet to test where you can record you own voice and play it back to yourself.
- Visualizations: Create some form of “vision board” for yourself. This can contain items you want base on you achieving your goals. Look at this “vision board’ each morning.
- Exercise: The hardest of the morning routines to do but probably the most important of all. Richard Branson, the demi-god of entrepreneurs, has said the one piece of advice he would give a budding entrepreneur is to work out The hardest part of this seems to be taking that first step, in my case leaving the door of my house for a run. My personal secret…put one foot in front of the other. Works every time.
- Reading: OK, I don’t do this one in the morning but I do constantly read self-improvement and business books. If you’re reading this you are probably on the right track. There’s so much great stuff out there now, please use it.
- Scribe: “Scribing” is journaling, basically writing stuff down. Other authors have suggested what you can write down, such as ideas and things you are grateful for. I find just writing thoughts helps me feel better and sometimes good ideas do come up.
I’ve skimmed over the concepts above grab a copy of the The Miracle Morning or The Miracle Morning for Salespeople to get the full lowdown.
All this stuff does take time, maybe even over an hour, depending particularly on your exercise program. But after our morning at him we spend 8 plus hours at work.
We waste a bunch of these 8 hours being unproductive or not “fired up”. If the investment of an hour, or so, at the beginning of our day can get us to a state of actual productivity for the other 8 hours then this is a pretty smart move.
I’m not your guru, or anyone’s really, but I encourage you to experiment with some of this stuff. Sales is tough on the mind and in my experience you want to be mentally prepared for it.
I am not your guru is the name of a documentary featuring Tony Robbins. It’s a fun show, if you haven’t seen it’s on Netflix.