NOTES 1 Lesson Twelve LESSON TWELVE EFFECTIVE WORK HABITS The purpose of this lesson is to encourage you to use effective work habits that will lead to greater focus, effectiveness, and success in selling with less frustration and confusion. In this lesson, you will learn: • The Value of Good Work Habits • To Take Personal Responsibility • The Motivation of Personal Goals • The Power of Priorities • To Form Profitable Work Habits • Reinforcement Through Affirmation • Success Essentials THE VALUE OF GOOD WORK HABITS We first make our habits and then our habits make us or break us. Good work habits are fundamental to success in professional selling. The benefits of good work habits are rich and varied. Set high goals; then anticipate rewards and develop work habits that help you attain them: • Increased productivity and increased income • Enhanced self-esteem, increased confidence, and a greater enthusiasm for work and for life in general • Ability to tackle a long list of work items without feeling frustrated, discouraged or depressed • Improved decision-making ability • Avoidance of time conflicts through better organization and setting of priorities Sales Certification 1
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1 Lesson Twelve
LESSON TWELVE
EFFECTIVE WORK HABITS
The purpose of this lesson is to encourage you to use effective work habits that will lead to greater focus, effectiveness, and success in selling with less frustration and confusion.
In this lesson, you will learn:
• The Value of Good Work Habits
• To Take Personal Responsibility
• The Motivation of Personal Goals
• The Power of Priorities
• To Form Profitable Work Habits
• Reinforcement Through Affirmation
• Success Essentials
THE VALUE OF GOOD WORK HABITS
We first make our habits and then our habits make us or break us. Good work habits are fundamental to success in professional selling. The benefits of good work habits are rich and varied. Set high goals; then anticipate rewards and develop work habits that help you attain them:
• Increased productivity and increased income
• Enhanced self-esteem, increased confidence, and a greater enthusiasm for work and for life in general
• Ability to tackle a long list of work items without feeling frustrated, discouraged or depressed
• Improved decision-making ability
• Avoidance of time conflicts through better organization and setting of priorities
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NOTES • Ability to handle crisis situations quickly and effectively
• More time for family and recreation
• An overall feeling of accomplishment and success
TAKING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
The great philosopher Plato said, “Take charge of your life. You can do with it what you will.” Success in professional selling requires that you take charge of your life and become a self-starter who exercises initiative and takes responsibility for doing whatever needs to be done at the right time and in the right way. As a result, you develop greater skill in prospecting, scheduling interviews, making presentations, getting referrals, and closing sales.
When you develop excellent work habits and take responsi-bility for your own success, you often exceed the best that you visualize for yourself because you rise to meet needs when you see them. Winston Churchill was talking about this kind of personal responsibility for action when he said, “It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required.”
THE MOTIVATION OF PERSONAL GOALS
The basis of all productive work habits is a plan – a personal plan that only you can devise and execute. Every minute you spend in planning saves at least twice that amount of time in execution.
1. Define Your Goals.
Visualize exactly the position or level of sales you want to attain; then write it on a Goal Planning Sheet. Be specific: do not generalize. Avoid vague terms like, “I want to be successful,” or “I want to make more money.” Decide precisely what you want in the areas of earnings, savings, investment, and material possessions. Then identify specific sales objectives you plan to reach to support these specific goals.
2. Create a Timetable for Each Step.
Once you have determined a long-range, ultimate goal for your selling career, divide the goal into logical steps that you can achieve one at a time that lead to the fulfill-ment of your ultimate goal. Once you have defined these intermediate steps, create a timetable or series of dead-
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lines for the achievement of each one. Any construction project, no matter how big, is easier to build with smaller units than with one large piece of material. When you build your sales career with small successes – one after another – you can reach your ultimate goal more easily than by any other strategy. Set certain target dates to reach your goals. Then, do whatever is necessary to meet them.
3. Monitor Your Progress.
Devise a system to check on the progress you are mak-ing. LMI furnishes you with a report form for recording weekly activities and results. It is vital to measure your activities constantly and consistently. It is fairly simple to get back on course when you are just a little off. But if you wait to check your progress until the end of the quarter, it may already be too late to reach your goals for the year! Heading in the right direction in your sales career requires that you fix your eye upon your goal, visualize it with every ounce of your being, work daily toward its achievement, and monitor your progress constantly. Keeping daily records produces consistency – and consistency produces success. (Review Lesson Eleven: Tracking)
4. Make Adjustments.
Monitoring your progress reveals areas in your plan that require adjustment. Your original target date may have allowed too little or too much time. You may find your goal too high or too low. Your goals belong to you; you can adjust them to suit your needs and circumstances.
When you have set specific and measurable goals for your entire sales career and for this year, this month, and this week, your motivation to move forward is sustained daily by your knowledge that you are moving toward that achievement of goals that are meaningful to you. You avoid many of the periods of depression that are common to salespeople who lack the motivation of a pro-gram of personal goals. Remember, first you work on your goals, then your goals work on you.
THE POWER OF PRIORITIES
Master salespeople spend their time and effort on activities that produce the greatest results. Let the 80/20 principle guide
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NOTES you: eighty percent of the results you achieve invariably come from twenty percent of the different tasks you perform. Identify the specific activities you perform that are most productive in bringing you closer to the achievement of your goals. These are your high payoff activities, the ones that are the most important for you. LMI salespeople find that their list of priorities reads like this:
1. Planning and Organizing
2. Prospecting
3. Scheduling Interviews
4. Face-to-Face Interviews
5. Customer Service
6. Self-Development
NOTE: Stop and place these high payoff activities in your My-Tyme® or iMy-Tyme™ System before continuing with this lesson. The high payoff activities box is located on the back page of the Monthly Planner in the center of the page directly across from the 1-31 Tracking Form.
Daily activity is the key to sales success. Once you estab-lish your selling priorities, you can translate your goals into daily activities that will bring you success. Stick with your high payoff activities regardless of the demands of others, unexpected inter-ruptions, or persistent requests throughout the day. While some emergencies and requests are, of course, legitimate, many others are not. But remember, developing productive habits requires sticking to your priorities and working on high payoff activities.
The most efficient way to organize your time is by the min-ute. Plan your day in minute detail, allowing a specified number of minutes for each task. Consciousness of minutes enables you to make frequent checks on yourself and your surroundings and head off many negative factors before they develop or do any real damage. Ask yourself frequently, “Is this the best use of my time right now?”
NOTE: The Time Picture of a Successful LMI Representa-tive can be found at the end of this lesson. You will notice that all of the six high-payoff activities appear on the Time Picture.
STOP HERE: Before continuing in this lesson, copy the illustrated Time Picture on to a blank Time Picture Form in the My-Tyme® System. You will find a blank Time Picture
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behind the green tab marked “Tracking” about halfway be-tween the green and blue tabs. Once you have completed the Time Picture of a Successful LMI Representative, move it in front of the most current Month at a Glance tab. Then transfer the Time Picture into your Month at a Glance each week when planning your week. The closer you mirror this Time Picture, the more successful you will be.
Setting priorities for your daily work activity helps you to manage your time and your territory in the most efficient manner possible. Use some of these techniques in controlling work habits:
1. Cluster Types of Activities
Every time you change from one activity to another, you invariably waste a little bit of time shifting gears and ad-justing your thinking. It makes sense to cluster similar activities in a single block of time. For example, set aside an hour, or whatever time length is appropriate, in your work for making phone calls to schedule interviews. Set a time limit for making your calls, and finish the list in that length of time. Reserve another time block during non-prime selling time for necessary paperwork and do it all at one time. This leaves the majority of your work time for the high priority item: face-to-face sales interviews.
2. Cluster Calls Geographically
Regardless of the size of your territory, reserve certain days of the week or month for specific portions of the territory. As you schedule sales interviews, keep your calendar open and be sure that each interview scheduled will be in a location that requires the smallest amount of travel. Also learn to schedule calls so that you take maximum advantage of traffic flow in the city. Why spend an hour in traffic if you can, by scheduling the interview at a more appropriate time, reach the same destination in ten to twenty minutes.
3. Use the My-Tyme® System
The My-Tyme and iMy-Tyme System are great tools for the application, continuity, and reinforcement of the con-cepts that will ensure your success. The daily repetitive use of the My-Tyme System will help you internalize the habits of a successful salesperson.
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NOTES 4. Use the Daily Imperative/Important List in the My-TymeSystem
At the end of each day, use an Imperative/ImportantList to make a list of all the things that need to be doneduring the next workday. Under the heading Imperative,write everything that must be done without fail in order toreach your goals. If something appears in the Imperativebox, it must be prioritized, a time estimate of comple-tion, and specific time block designated on your dailycalendar to be completed. Under the heading Important,write all of the things that could be done today to movetoward your goals, but could wait another day or twowithout harm. No time is scheduled for these activitiesnecessarily. Keep your My-Tyme System list handy andcheck off each item as it is completed. Using the Impera-tive/Important list in your My-Tyme System keeps you ontrack during the day and makes sure you are spendingyour time on top priorities.
5. Use a Conference Planner
Use the Conference Planner in your My-Tyme System tojot down notes of items you want to discuss with variouspeople and wait until you have several items beforecalling or meeting with them.
FORMING PROFITABLE WORK HABITS
Earlier conditioning exerts a strong control over your work habits. Instead of allowing habits or decisions you made years ago to continue operating in your life, you can form new habits and new behavior patterns. You can adopt new attitudes and deliberately act upon them through conscious choice until they become so firmly established that they replace the old habits or behaviors that stand between you and the achievement of your desired goals.
Attitudes, behavior, and results are all bound together in a cause and effect relationship. They are much like the three points of a triangle. Movement and change might begin at any point and move in either direction around the triangle. If you make a com-mitment to yourself to adopt new attitudes, those new attitudes will produce changed results. Seeing the change in results then makes you willing, even eager, to change your behavior on a permanent basis. Changed behavior, in turn, reinforces the new attitudes. But it is also possible to begin with behavior. When you
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try new behavior patterns, the repetition of these new behaviors affects your attitudes and that produces different results. New be-havior patterns may first produce new results that will then cause adoption of new attitudes. In some cases, you may focus attention on desired results. Enlist your coworkers or family members to concentrate with you on producing desired results and making a quick impact on both attitudes and behaviors.
Displacement is an effective method or approach to exchang-ing less productive work habits for more productive ones. Visu-alize in your mind a large bucket. In this bucket are collected all of your work habits developed over the past. Unfortunately, many of these habits are less constructive than you desire them to be. Typical poor work habits include procrastination, spending time on low payoff activities, and giving up too easily. Consequently, the bucket is filled with cold water that dampens enthusiasm, quenches initiative, and drowns productivity.
Now visualize a large bed of small stones. Remember how you enjoyed such stones when you were a child? Their smooth texture felt smooth in your fingers; their firm weight in your hand was a constant reminder of their presence; their reassuring warmth from lying in the sun gave you a good feeling as you handled them. Now, see yourself eagerly dropping one of these warm stones into the bucket of water. What happens? The principle of displacement begins to work. When the stone is dropped into the bucket, some of the water is displaced. As you continue to add new stones, more and more of the water is displaced and the remainder takes on a measure of warmth from contact with the warm stones.
If the warm stones represent positive thoughts and construc-tive attitudes that you deliberately feed into a mind stocked with too many negatives, you can see how the effect of these warm, positive ideas gradually begin to operate in your favor. More and more negative habits are displaced or modified. Your mind grad-ually begins to call upon the new attitudes and experiences you are constantly feeding into it, and your work habits begin to reflect the more positive attitudes that now dominate your mind.
Once you identify the habits of thought and action required to accomplish the goals you have set for yourself and begin using displacement to incorporate them into your daily activities, you need to practice them. Apply the time-tested adage, “Practice makes perfect,” to each attitude or action until it becomes auto-matic. Let’s look, for example, at people who have a difficult time saying “No” when someone asks them to do something. Some-how, they have developed an attitude that lets them be talked into
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NOTES commitments, tasks or projects in which they have little interest. In a similar way, they let people interrupt their work schedule im-mediately to their requests. They become slaves to the requests and demands of others.
When these people recognize that this attitude and behavior creates frustration and cuts down on their productivity, the cure is displacement. Adopting a new attitude toward themselves and others, they can set specific goals, make a plan for achieving these goals, and then carry out the daily activities required to achieve their goals. They practice diplomatically telling others “No” when a request does not fit into their goals: “Thank you for asking me to do this important assignment. I’d like to help, but I have some high priority commitments right now. I know you will find someone who has a special interest in your project and will do a good job for you.”
When you reach certain goals because of improved work habits, reward yourself. When you attempt to establish new habits a little at a time and reinforce success appropriately, you make progress faster than you dreamed possible. Since this is your own personal goal, it is not necessary that the rewards or reinforcements you use make sense to anyone else. If they work for you, use them.
REINFORCEMENT THROUGH AFFIRMATION
One of the most effective tools available to reinforce your determination to change attitudes and improve work habits is affirmation. Perhaps without realizing it, we all talk to ourselves to reinforce values and standards, to justify behavior, and to evaluate effectiveness. But this automatic process can be brought into the realm of consciousness and directed for your benefit. When you have identified a work habit you wish to improve or establish, formulate some affirmations to support the actions you plan to take. Use affirmations like these to help reinforce your work habits:
• I have realistic goals and good work habits to help me accomplish them.
• I stick to my plan and am successful.
• I spend my time on high payoff activities.
• I am persistent.
• I love my work and begin each day with positive expec-tancy.
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Write your affirmations down and display them where you will see them often. Keep them in your My-Tyme System as well, and read them every day. As you look at these statements and repeat them to yourself several times a day, they affect your attitude. You begin to think of yourself as successful in following the new behaviors you have chosen. The resulting self-confidence is then available for your use to support your actions every day. With new, productive work habits you are firmly in control of your life. To en-sure that your affirmations result in the desired behavior change, set specific goals for developing the behavior that will produce your desired success. Then, write your affirmations so that they directly reflect your goals.
When you become proficient in the use of affirmations that are tied directly to your goals, you reduce conflicts in your think-ing. Your priorities, personal values and desires are all in line. Then, you begin to experience a serenity of mind and spirit that is a boundless well of power. Such serenity provides a vision of the potential our Creator has given to each of us. It is the force that enables us to put extra effort into everything we undertake; it empowers us to think more clearly and more positively and to set proper priorities; and it helps us do a hard job more easily. Mental and spiritual serenity reinforces your system of personal values – your beliefs about yourself, about other people, and about your purpose as an individual. When your goals for your career and your life are consistent with your personal values, the resulting serenity frees you from the motivation blocks of doubt, fear and worry. Instead, you are filled with an eternal spring of spiritual and emotional energy. Used wisely, that energy is an incomparable source of self-confidence and inner strength – qualities essential to the maintenance of productive work habits and ultimately to success in selling!
SUCCESS ESSENTIALS
You don’t inherit success or failure. Environment doesn’t pre-determine your destiny. Whether you were born rich or poor has little effect on the level of accomplishment you attain. Thousands of examples can be cited of a poor man’s children who become rich and a rich man’s children who become poor. There is a rea-son! Successful people have formed effective work habits. Good LMI representatives are not born; they are developed by their own consistent efforts over a period of time. The successful LMI representative forms the habit of working which leads to success. Successful people are motivated by an end result. Average people
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NOTES are motivated by comfortable methods. LMI professionals know how to set and achieve goals and organize their activities to get the most accomplished within the available time.
Do These Things and You Will Be Successful
1. Tailor your business to fit your personality, skills, expe-rience, education, and motivation.
2. Focus on one program and become a specialist.
3. Follow the system of the most successful.
4. Follow the advice of your coaches.
5. Learn to ask good questions, and then listen.
6. Work from referrals.
7. Establish a target market.
8. Follow the script, it builds credibility.
9. Schedule three appointments per day.
10. Prospect every day — make prospecting a lifestyle.
11. Go where you are wanted.
12. Make people qualified to see you.
13. Ask for help when you need it.
14. Remove limitations through prioritized activities.
15. Lose yourself in the goals of others.
16. Eliminate time wasters and negative individuals from your life.
17. Share everything you do.
18. Develop ten Centers of Influence.
19. Avoid activities that are not related to your goals.
20. Create a sense of urgency about your work.
21. Tell six people about your business every day.
22. Write letters, send notes, and email articles to prospects and clients.
23. Use your My-Tyme® System.
24. Plan, Plan, Plan, Set Goals, Set Goals, Set Goals.
25. Be a product of the LMI Programs — it’s not optional.
NOTE: You will find a copy of the Success Essentials Checklist on page 21. Use the Success Essentials Checklist daily to analyze and organize your work habits consistently
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When you have formed these "Success Habits," you will have the confidence, the security, and the peace of mind
essential to positive personal direction.
Paul J. Meyer
and to implement action into the areas where it is most needed. Use the checklist as a yardstick to measure your work and refer to it daily.
IMPORTANT!
Continue to work diligently in this Sales Certification I Manual. Go through it over and over again. The power of spaced repetition and your effort will pay you rich dividends as you incorporate new attitudes and skills into your selling activity.
LESSON TWELVE
APPLICATION AND ACTION
Topics are provided here to stimulate thought and application of the material in this lesson. With your particular situation in mind, write your responses in the space provided. Discuss specific ideas with your team and/or your LMI coach/mentor.
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1. Give a brief explanation of the 80/20 principle.
SUCCESS ESSENTIALS CHECKLIST(To be used to diagnose sales progress)
YES NO
I. QUALIFIED FACE-TO-FACE INTERVIEWS
1) A minimum of three today?2) A minimum of three yesterday?3) A minimum of three every day last week?
II. PROSPECTING
1) A minimum of 25 Class “A” prospects?2) Getting a minimum of eight referrals on every sale?3) Getting adequate information of these referrals?4) Supplementing referral prospecting with pre-approach letters?5) My-Tyme® New Prospects/Clients forms used daily?6) Developing Centers of Influence?
III. APPOINTMENT-SCHEDULING1) Having a specific time every day to call for appointments?2) Each night selecting the prospects to be contacted the next day?3) Using the Telephone Approach Card? (Lesson Six)4) Maintaining accurate and up-to-date records?
IV. PRESENTATION
1) Knowing the Opening and the Close?2) Confining your Presentation to approximately 30 minutes?3) Overcoming usual objections with confidence?4) A good closer?
V. ATTITUDE
1) Reviewing your Third Party material daily?2) Reading Affirmations daily?3) Planning each day with Positive Expectancy?
VI. TIME ORGANIZATION
1) Each night, preparing an “Imperative” and “Important” list for the next day?2) Appointments scheduled geographically to conserve traveling time?3) Knowing how much your time is worth per hour?
