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Wealth Tribe Coaches Ken Doyle and Lauren Eichner
Most people in business, particularly sales, want to win! We want every day to be Super Bowl Sunday and we have to play at 100%. We have to leave everything on the field of battle to walk off exhausted, but victorious! You must charge hard at your goal 100% each day, you should give 110%. You need to grind it out. Put your nose to the grind stone and grind it, grind it, grind it!
Take a moment to visualize putting your nose to the grindstone. Feel what it would feel like to literally get your nose grinded off your face. How will it feel when that grinder gets to the bridge of your nose? It is going to be immensely painful. I am confident that many of you reading this have Rambo-like qualities and would gladly spring out of bed in the morning to do this. But even Rambo has a breaking point. It is with this thinking of grinding it out that I believe is why most people do not reach their potential in business! What if business were a game that could never be won, only played? Think about someone that you know who has “won” in business. A few of those people actually contribute to the WealthVest blog like Wade Dokken, Ron Carson and Tom Hamlin. All three of these men are immensely successful, yet they are all still engaged in the world of business! I submit they all have enough money from “winning” at business to spend the rest of their lives on some tropical island drinking Mai Tais. So why don’t they? The answer is probably because they know consciously or unconsciously that its only a game and they love to play it. I also submit that they have even set up standards for themselves for scoring points in this game that can not be won.
I know it sounds a little silly to be scoring points in a game that can not be won but for a game to be a game there has to be some way of keeping score. Some people keep score by the amount of money they make, others keep score by silently competing with their peers, while others keep score by advancing the standards that they set which allows them to know if they are personally winning or not. The last way is my personal favorite because it allows an individual to design their business so that it is in alignment with themselves. This way takes conscious discernment and is the highest level of ‘playing the game’.
Now lets take all this high flautin’ talk about the game we are playing and put it into practical material that the members of Wealth Tribe can flourish with. First, ask yourself, “How do I know if I had a great day or week?”
Warning! Most of you will answer with a production number or say I sold something!
This is a very dangerous answer because you do not have direct control of the outcome i.e. you cannot force someone to write you a check nor can you control when an insurance company executes a 1035 exchange. But what you can control are your activity standards. When I was in sales management I noticed my people would become either very elated when they sold something or very depressed if they did not sell something. When something was sold they got cocky and would want to celebrate by leaving early or fluffing for the rest of the week. When they did not sell they began to question themselves or the product, trying to determine if they or it was good or not. When their minds attached to production it made them less effective. In my early days, I used to work with Mark Tully who is a WealthVest wholesaler and former Chief Sales Officer. He taught me that activity drives production. He taught me that the right activity was more important to commission runs or production because activity would eventually drive production.
So, ultimately, its your activity standards that matter because production is about the past. Activity today is what creates the future. Your standards will create the structure for you to be free to win your “unwinnable game.” Your standards will also make your game more enjoyable when you surrender to the standard that no matter what, you will hit your activity standards. Your standards should be unique to you and what you are creating. They should also be tracked so you can analyze the patterns that you see emerging. Not having a standard is like trying to learn how to shoot without a target. If you do not have a target, you can never improve your aim!
Examples of Activities to Standardize:
Appointments set
Appointments Executed
Client Touches
Prospecting Activity
Asking for Referrals
Networking
Time with Family
Solitude – think time
Strategic Planning time
The power of the activity comes from identifying the activity, tracking the activity, and analyzing the results to see if they are in alignment with the goals that you are committed to achieving.
Standards will set you free to play this wonderful game of business! So be clear on what your standards are today.
