Stop wasting time!

Our most precious commodity is time—we only have so much each day, week, month, etc. Because it is such a precious and limited resource, we must fully understand that every minute you spend with the wrong person, you cheat the right person out of! 

Here are some examples. If you spend 30 minutes on a sales call with someone who is not a good prospect, you cheated a better prospect out of those 30 minutes. If you interview a candidate for 60 minutes who is not a good fit, you cheated a better fit candidate out of the time. Even if you spend 5-10 minutes coaching an employee who will never get better, you have cheated a better employee out of the time. 

More painful and hard to acknowledge is that often the person or people we cheat are those closest to us—our family, friends, and even ourselves. If we have sales calls, meetings, interviews, etc., with the wrong people, we work later than we should. Thus, cheating family, friends, and ourselves out of our precious time. 

So how do we get better at this? Two key concepts to start with:

1. Have a crystal-clear picture of your ideal (client, prospect, employee, etc.)
2. Focus your interactions on disqualifying the wrong people

Far too often in leadership, management, and sales, we don’t know what we are specifically looking for, and we don’t provide that clarity to our teams. We proceed and offer generic direction or none at all. This typically sounds like we want to sell to “anyone” who needs tools or sell to “all” contractors, or we are looking for a “seasoned” salesperson. Those are very generic. 

Instead, we need to have extremely specific things to work on identifying. For example, we work with electrical contractors who value top-level solutions that allow them to save labor and get jobs done as efficiently as possible. Or we are looking for an ambitious leader who is comfortable taking their earning potential into their control and shows up each day with an attitude of abundance. More specific descriptions, primarily focused on behaviors, habits, and attitudes, allow us to build questions and things to observe or listen for more quickly. This then allows us to make huge strides in eliminating wasted time. 

Once we have the more specific things to look for and listen for, we can build out ways to identify what we are not looking for. This allows us to build methods and strategies for disqualifying (rather than qualifying). Far too often, our generic descriptions have us looking at things and trying to force or justify them as a good fit. Instead, look for all the ways they are not a good fit. The by-product is that we find a good fit much quicker. 

For example, if we don’t want to sell to people who just price shop for the lowest price. Look for ways to identify that as quickly as possible, and don’t waste time calling on them. 

These concepts seem simple; however, they are not easy. They require us to be honest about our own behaviors, habits, and attitudes, which is often painful. If wasted time is frustrating for you and you genuinely want to get better, find a business growth consultant who can help.