| As a sales professional, sales leader or
business owner, distractions can often be the main obstacle for achieving great success.
If you have too many distractions, you will never achieve
your full potential.
It is important to continue to evaluate what sales
activities will be most important to reach your goals. Then, you must focus on those
activities first, and make a commitment to complete them each and every day without
failure.
You must remove and minimize your distractions. You will
then have the time to focus on what you have determined is most important.
Here are some tips on how to minimize common distractions:
Limit your number of social networks.
Determine which social networking sites are most valuable to you. You may be a member of
multiple forums, on line groups, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and will be invited
to join other networks as well. Pick a couple that are most helpful for you and drop the
rest.
Do not log into social networking sites while you are
working.
Save social networking for times when you are not at work.
Block time to check your email.
When you are working on a task, focus on the task. Emails constantly flying into your
inbox can be a constant distraction. Schedule specific times during the day to read and
send emails.
Send fewer, shorter emails.
Also, don’t become dependent on emailing versus picking up the phone. There is value
in the personal touch.
Shut off notifications.
Are you constantly getting pinged with an email, or tweet, or text or IM? When are you
actually focused and present in the moment? Don’t forget that the most important time
you have is right now. Consider at times completely shutting off your computer or turning
off your smartphone.
Clear off your desk.
Only keep what you truly need on it. Keep it neat and tidy. Do the same for your computer
desktop.
Do one thing at a time.
Multitasking can be totally counterproductive.
Do the tough stuff first.
Have a cut off time.
Make sure you have set times to complete your activities as well as set times to stop
working. Have you ever planned a trip where you left work early at 12:00 noon? Remember
how much you got done before 12:00 noon because you knew you had to leave early that day?
Exactly.
The next step is to put these items into action and start
minimizing your distractions today. Also, consider making a list of all other distractions
you may have.
By minimizing my own distractions, I was able to be a #1
sales performer within multiple fortune 500 organizations. Now, as a sales coach, I help
support my sales coaching clients achieve similar success by providing specific solutions
to challenges that are holding them back from extraordinary results. |
