Does Your Day Look Like This?

Here’s Chapter 1 from my newest book, More Sales, Less Time. See if you can relate! And, if so, please realize that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Every time someone would ask me, “How’s it going?” I’d answer with a smile and a twinkle in my eye: “Crazy busy!”

It was like I was wearing this as a badge of honor. In some perverse way, it made me feel important to say that.

While I might have fooled others that my life was great, I didn’t fool myself. Underneath my chipper exterior, I was struggling.

In sheer frustration, one day I decided to record everything I did from sunup to sundown. I wanted to see my life as it actually was and perhaps find a way to improve it. I was tired of the “crazy” part being so accurate.

What I discovered was pretty ugly, but I’m sharing it with you anyway. Perhaps this day will even feel familiar to you. Here it is, a typical day in my life before I started my productivity makeover.

It’s 7:15 on Thursday morning. Time to get up. I immediately head downstairs to feed the cat and make a pot of coffee. While it brews, I run upstairs, get dressed, and make myself presentable for the day. As soon as I’m done, I head back downstairs, pour myself a big cup of coffee, add a little cream, plop down at the kitchen table, and pick up my cell phone to start e-mail triage.

I quickly go through all the messages that came in overnight, deleting as many as I can, as quickly as humanly possible. It makes me happy to delete these messages—now I have fewer things to do for the day. I reward myself by playing a few games of Words with Friends. I then scan my favorite news feeds to catch up on world affairs.

After a half hour or so, it’s time to get to work. I take my smoothie out of the refrigerator, refill my coffee, grab my phone, and head to my office, which overlooks the woods behind our house. This seventeen-second commute completed, I sit down at my desk and open my e-mail to read and respond to the messages I’d deemed important enough to save.

Before I know it, I’m sucked into an article from one of my newsletters: “108 Game-Changing Sales Statistics.” There’s a reference in it to some fascinating statistics, so I track the information to its source, opening that study in a new tab, which I save to read for later.

Then I kick my own butt back to work, prepping for a project I’m doing with one of my clients. It’s hard work, involving multiple interviews and customizing a program tailored specifically for their reps. I review my notes, immerse myself in their case studies, and start to think about how I’ll structure the program.

As I do, I look outside and notice that it’s getting overcast. I wonder if it’ll rain later, so I open my weather app to check things out. Fortunately, the storms aren’t rolling in until tonight. Okay, back to work.

Even as I try to get back to the project at hand, I start thinking about the meeting I have with a prospective client later this afternoon. It’s a toughie. My prospect is really struggling to get everyone on board. It seems like all five people involved in the decision have totally different agendas. I ask myself, What will it take for them to all agree?

I head over to LinkedIn to learn more about the decision team. When I land on my LinkedIn home page, I’m greeted by a strategically placed promo for an e-book called How I Leveraged LinkedIn to Close a $100,000 Deal.

Of course, I can’t pass this up, so I click on the link, register for the e-book, download it, and then take a quick peek. Good stuff, I think. But I better get back to work.

(It’s not even 10 am yet! To learn more about my dirty little secrets, click here to read the rest of the chapter: https://www.jillkonrath.com/sales-blog/does-your-day-look-like-this

Better yet, get your copy of More Sales, Less Time now.