In Sales, Social Media's Indirect Benefits Matter Most

There's no better place to get a sense of the potential downside of social media for business than in B2B sales environments.

Sales managers are under a lot of pressure to get their reps to exploit interactive online technologies to the max, but that's a lot easier said than done. Simply telling sales professionals to start blogging or to jump on LinkedIn or Facebook has been shown to alienate customers, sap employee motivation, and undermine sales productivity.

To avoid those pitfalls, managers need to spend time and money providing training, direction, encouragement, and feedback in a field that is changing constantly. But according to Brian Fetherstonhaugh, CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, only 9% of salespeople responding to a recent global survey reported any such efforts. Even if companies do make these investments, and the effort results in reps' being better able to negotiate social media's chaotic terrain, there still might not be much to show in terms of higher sales.

So it's no wonder that there's a lot of uncertainty about, and even fear of, social media in B2B sales departments. Nevertheless, my research with Prabakar Kothandaraman and Rajiv Kashyap of William Paterson University and Ramendra Singh of IIM Calcutta shows that with the right managerial support, sales departments can use social media to create significant value for customers. The key is to focus not on direct benefits such as profits or sales volume, but on the indirect benefits — better market knowledge and increased customer engagement.

There's been a lot of grumbling in sales departments about social media, for understandable reasons: It challenges reps' familiar role as information brokers and threatens to interrupt traditional, tried-and-true approaches to communicating with customers such as phone calls and in-person meetings, to some extent replacing them with forms of communication that can be disconcertingly transparent.

For example, customers visiting SAP's Community Network talk openly about thorny issues ranging from product complexities to technical errors, and prospective customers can read every word. That kind of forum can be unsettling for sales reps who came of age before social media.

But social media isn't going away, and that's a good thing, because its upside is impressive: It can help reps build trust with customers and prospects; it can foster the interactivity that leads to deep customer engagement; it allows reps to hear customers' praise and gripes and to scout competitors' strengths and weaknesses; it gives reps a platform for educating customers, showcasing testimonials, and countering competitors' claims; it helps salespeople generate leads; and it facilitates the capture of important data about customers, ranging from their opinions to their birthdays.

A basic social-media strategy should involve helping salespeople specify their objectives, engage customers, and monitor competitors; in addition, companies should assess reps' performance. Beyond that, social media can be used in service of two very different approaches to sales: relational and transactional.

The relational approach is exemplified by IBM's social-media strategy, which emphasizes individual interactions as a way of building relationships and drawing customers in. Xerox too maintains numerous blogs that connect salespeople, prospects, customers, and product specialists.

The transactional approach was exemplified by Groupon's venture into the B2B area: It worked with a consulting firm, Ajilitee, that was willing to offer a discount for a data-analysis service to attendees of a cloud computing conference.

The approaches aren't mutually exclusive — a company can incorporate both into its overall strategy. But whatever the overarching strategy, there are certain capabilities that reps need to learn. Here are a few:

• Generating content. Whether it's on blogs or Twitter, salespeople need to learn to position themselves as experts and provide valuable information for customers and prospects. That might mean offering suggestions and solutions on a continuous basis, or it might mean conducting live Q&A sessions on Facebook with customers. Generating useful information not only makes the company top of mind and educates customers, it also sends a signal that the rep really cares about the buyer's bottom-line goals.

• Monitoring. Salespeople need to learn where users are congregating on the web and monitor their discussions in order to gain critically important information on what customers think about the company and its products and competitors. But reps need to be careful about intruding in these forums. "You have to earn the right to ask for leads," SAP senior VP Mark Yolton says in a "Social Media Best Practice" seminar. At the same time, reps can use platforms such as Twitter to follow customers and learn what they're thinking and what they're interested in — information that can be useful to reps in providing a personal touch.

• Developing leads. There are many ways to do this via social media. For example, a salesperson for an OEM, having learned through monitoring LinkedIn that a civil-engineering firm has secured a large account, might send a congratulatory tweet to the firm and initiate a discussion of tools that the firm might find interesting. A salesperson can also ask for a LinkedIn recommendation from an existing client from the same industry to enhance credibility.

Salespeople obviously aren't born knowing how to do these things, so managers need to provide support in the form of training and the hiring of technical staff. A seminar in writing for social media can be an effective way to help reps overcome any nerves about forms of online writing such as blogging. Managers also need to shift resources in order to adjust to the new demands on salespeople's time.

Companies, moreover, should be willing to shift a significant piece of the marketing budget to social media and to the creation of positions with specialized responsibilities, such as virtual-community manager, social-media strategist, social-network moderators, and social-marketing specialist.

When it comes to metrics, companies should develop measures that reflect strategic priorities and the importance of social media's indirect benefits — for example, customer engagement rate (the number of click-throughs or the volume of posts or comments on a blog) and digital-audience growth (the number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, or LinkedIn connections). These results should be monitored on a weekly or monthly basis.

One caution: Don't be too reliant on metrics. Many of the benefits of social media, such as customer engagement, can't be easily quantified. But that doesn't make them any less important.

Raj Agnihotri is an assistant professor and research director at the Schey Sales Centre at Ohio University.

Source

Marketing Without a Master

Marketers love the notion that a great idea can be carefully crafted and nurtured by one man or woman. Think of Milton Glaser's iconic images, the fictional talent of Don Draper, or the all-too-real attention to detail embodied by Steve Jobs. Agency truly lies with the agency — or so marketers would like to think — whether that be an ad agency, PR firm, or graphic team.

But right now, I'm working on a marketing campaign that knows no master, a ship without a captain. And it's exhilarating. Its logo will never win any design awards, and there are no brand guidelines, but somehow this idea has grown to over 1,000 volunteer partners in every state. It's called #GivingTuesday.

Taking place on November 27, 2012, #GivingTuesday's goal is to show that the holiday shopping season can also be about giving back. From large retailers like JC Penney to small businesses and local charities, organizations across all 50 states are committing to take special action on November 27 .
I love #GivingTuesday because it's wonderfully self-reliant.

No single person or group owns this effort. There's a team behind the project, working hard to make #GivingTuesday a success. 92Y in New York and The United Nations Foundation birthed the idea and have worked hard to shape its success. Both organizations have worked on uniting communities to harness social media for social good, and #GivingTuesday was a logical framework to bring Americans together for this purpose.

Mashable brought in crucial feedback based on their work with what they call "the connected generation." These leaders in turn cajoled, (pro bono) many sector experts, from PR to social media. We've nurtured #GivingTuesday and given it a platform, creating opportunities for user feedback, social media engagement, and word of mouth.

How do you give birth to a project with no master that is still strong enough to retain its shape and initial purpose? It seems to me there are three components:

1. Building the right framework: #GivingTuesday isn't a campaign; it's an idea. We wanted to simply create an organizing principle to encourage the creativity and energy of Americans to work together for a greater good. We wanted to launch a story that would engage people of every background and allow them to run with it in their own way, according to their own passions and abilities.

For instance, several big companies have pledged large, complicated efforts of the kind only a large company could organize. Microsoft will launch a major donor matching campaign on GiveforYouth.org — a new micro-giving portal designed to allow donors to fund and follow the dreams of young people around the world. Simon Property Group will be collecting donations at Simon malls nationwide to support the Simon Youth Foundation (SYF) and American Red Cross. eBay/PayPal will waive fees for non-profit donations.

Smaller nonprofits are making smaller, but very concrete, commitments. For every donation made on #GivingTuesday, Plant A Fish will plant a mangrove; for every fifth donation the organization will release a baby sea turtle. Phoenix House, a nonprofit organization that provides alcohol and drug abuse treatment, is asking people to write letters of support to the men and women in its treatment programs.

But part of our goal with #GivingTuesday was that the framework be flexible enough for individuals to be part of it — not just through their organizations. My colleague Chrysula Winegar is determined to set aside time on #GivingTuesday for holiday shopping — by buying family members charitable donations for Christmas in place of physical items they don't necessarily need. Ilina Ewen is incorporating the "new tradition" of #givingtuesday into continuing to teach her two young sons about why giving back is essential part of life.

2. Talking to the right audience: Henry Timms, who initially envisioned #GivingTuesday a year ago, introduced me to the concept of the "connected generation" and of course it immediately gelled. The success of a project like #GivingTuesday relies on strong interconnected networks of digital influencers. Unlike traditional marketing segments, the connected generation audience can't be broken down by age, demographics, interest, or hobby. What they have in common is their reliance on the web as the best possible source of information, innovation, and contacts.

We knew that the social influencers who would spread the idea of #GivingTuesday lead strong interconnected networks online. Theses audiences include individuals of every background and who care about a multitude of issues. What they have in common is their reliance on the web as the best possible source of information, innovation, and connectivity. We knew that if one influencer in a network learned about #GivingTuesday and was inspired to act, he or she would work to organize friends and followers as well.

3. Creating a strong mission: The best marketing campaigns call on something visceral in people; they respond to what we desire. Sure, sex sells in marketing, but there are other powerful ways to engage people. As Beth Kanter writes, "Empathy is an excellent marketing strategy tool."

Each year, we hear about people getting trampled in Wal-Mart or fighting over drastically reduced electronics on Black Friday. It should be no surprise that #GivingTuesday speaks to many Americans' desire to escape the scrum of Black Friday, the relentless marketing of post-Thanksgiving shopping. We believe Americans have a desire to put giving back into the giving season. And so with #GivingTuesday, we give people the nugget of inspiration, and let them get on with their work.

Members of the #GivingTuesday team were on an organizing call for our social media ambassadors when one woman came on to tell us about her baby, "Fair Trade Tuesday." The marketer in me immediately wanted to shut her down: that's off brand — she invented a new name! But then I remembered, #GivingTuesday is hers to adapt, and that's where the beauty in this project lies.

Perhaps we need to focus less on controlling every aspect of a brand or campaign or more on providing a framework where ideas can grow organically. I will try to remember the principles of the self-reliant campaign in my next project, and the empowerment people feel when we give them the opportunity to act. As marketers, the most important thing we do is create an idea or feeling strong enough to take on a life of its own.

Morra Aarons-Mele is the founder of Women Online and The Mission List. She is an Internet marketer who has been working with women online since 1999. She helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first Internet chat, and launched Wal-Mart’s first blog. Morra tweets at @morraam.

Sales Strategies for Uncertain Times

Many companies have taken cost-cutting initiatives over the last few years. In uncertain times, some leaders carefully select their growth opportunities and position themselves to capture market share. Others optimize their sales force effectiveness to improve competitiveness.

One common mistake companies make is to reduce costs across the board by a fixed percentage, which weakens the competitive position. Let’s instead review a few best practices.

Identify a well-defined and targeted offering. The priorities of your top customers may be different in an uncertain economic environment than in an economy of rapid growth. For example, one company that previously prioritized convenience and accessibility now prioritizes maintenance costs as one of the most important buying factors. Understanding what matters to your top customers will enable sales and marketing to tailor the offering, marketing material and key selling points based on changes in customer needs.

Furthermore, every customer consumes internal resources. By focusing on the most important customers and tailoring offerings to them, companies can focus their internal resources and eliminate, reduce, consolidate or outsource non-critical activities. One example is to tailor pre- and after-sales support activities to the most important customers and offerings. This leads to the next best practice.

Focus cost-cutting and productivity improvements on those activities that drive the largest share of their SG&A expenses. One company applied an activity-based costing analysis to identify its most costly activities and then focused on those to reduce costs – a much more effective way than just applying a cost-cutting figure across the board. Initiatives that were undertaken to reduce costs included standardizing the product design activities in the sales process, eliminate nonprofitable customers (to both drive fewer non value-added sales activities and immediately improve profitability), improve and automate the quoting tool, work with process repeatability, and cross-train across certain sales back office roles. This company estimated a total saving of 26 percent from all initiatives. Typical savings are in the range of 20 to 25 percent (but can be higher or lower).

However, some companies decide to use the improved productivity to take on more sales, without hiring new people, while others prefer using it to directly reduce operating expenses.

Be cautious with pricing.Pricing has a larger impact on profitability than almost all other means available to managers. Yet pricing does not receive enough focus in most organizations. Managers and salespeople need to be careful with discounting, especially during uncertain times. A cut of $1 directly hits the bottom line by the same amount.

More focus and stricter pricing policies are often needed to avoid price wars and price leakage. In uncertain times, it is especially important to define what those are. Differentiation is another area affecting pricing. When you are providing a different value than your competitors, the challenge instead lies in setting an appropriate price – you may even be able to raise your price in a downturn. Improving value-based selling, setting price of offerings based on your customers’ needs, and implementing stricter policies around pricing and discounting are examples of important levers available to managers in uncertain economic environments.

Other common initiatives include stricter performance management, improving prioritization of customer prospects, redefining sales deployment of both frontline and back office personnel (territory coverage, roles, activities, number of people, etc.), reducing complexity and finding new means of financing customers. Some companies reduce, eliminate, consolidate or outsource non-critical activities – both to save cost and improve focus. Others take the opportunity to improve productivity of frontline sales by implementing a value based selling approach.

Best-in-class companies use several of these approaches to improve their competitive position by working effectively with sales management in a slow-growing economy.

Rickard Alfredéen is the founder of Oneforce, a management consulting firm focusing on growth strategy and performance improvement.

Source

4 Marketing Tips For Small Businesses From 'Your Business'

4 Marketing Tips For Small Businesses From 'Your Business' Host JJ Ramberg: There is exactly one show on U.S. television that focuses exclusively on the needs of small business: "Your Business" on MSNBC.  Host JJ Ramberg has just published a book titled "It's Your Business: 183 Essential Tips That Will Transform Your Small Business."  JJ has unique insight on small companies, having seen hundreds of them in the 6 years that she's hosted the show.  JJ was kind enough to answer four questions for me and share four exclusive marketing tips.

Get Your Customers to Sell for You

Get Your Customers to Sell for You:
Use your website and social networking to generate easy-to-close referral sales.
When it comes to selling, referrals are the Holy Grail. It's much easier to make a sale when the sales process starts with a customer recommending you to a friend or colleague.
Ideally, you want to turn your best customers into a "volunteer sales force," according to Rob Fuggetta, author of the newly published book Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers Into a Powerful Marketing Force.
When I recently spoke with Fuggetta (who also heads the firm Zuberance) about referral selling, he gave me the following five tips:
1. Identify your best customers.
First, find out which of your existing customers are likely to join your "volunteer sales force." Use your website, blog, newsletter, or other customer touch points to ask the following question:
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company or product?
Any customer who responds with a "9″ or a "10″ is a candidate to become what Fuggetta calls a "brand advocate" who will help you sell your product to other people. Capture the contact information for these customers, and you're well on your way to getting those easy-to-close referral sales.
2. Make it easy for your best customers to post reviews.
Once you've identified potential brand advocates, invite them to write reviews of your company or product on sites that post customer reviews (e.g., Yelp, Amazon, Best Buy) and provide them with links to the appropriate pages on those review sites.
According to Fuggetta, about 20% of customers who answered "9″ or "10″ will write reviews. Therefore, if you've got 10,000 customers and 2,000 answer "9″ or "10," you'll end up with 400 customer reviews. That's a lot of reviews.
Customer reviews accomplish two things. First, they make your product more attractive to new buyers, because buyers are more influenced by the opinions of their peers than your advertising or marketing. Second, when existing customers make a public commitment to your product, they are more likely to follow through on the next three steps.
3. Encourage your best customers to write testimonials.
Reviews talk about the product and how well it works. Testimonials are personal stories about how the product "changed the world" for the customer or the customer's firm. (Think "Kodak moment.") Testimonials are much more useful than reviews as sales tools because stories tend to stick in people's minds.
Fuggetta cites the example of a restaurant called Rubio's that reputedly sells great fish tacos. While Rubio's has plenty of Yelp reviews to that effect, what sticks in the mind is the woman who named her daughter Ruby because she went into labor while eating a fish taco at the restaurant.
When you get a testimonial, you post it on your website, of course. However, testimonials are even more powerful as sales tools when customers post them on their Facebook pages, especially if they're willing to include a link to your website.
4. Invite your best customers to answer questions from prospects.
Prospects often have questions before they buy. Though your sales team can probably answer those questions, those answers will be taken more seriously when they're provided by one of your existing customers. There are two ways to make this happen.
The cheapest method is to have a support forum in which customers can answer questions. The trick here is that it has to be easy for prospects to register and ask questions. Also, you'll need to keep an eye on the forum to make sure that dissatisfied customers don't start bad-mouthing.
A more elegant approach is to put a banner on your website reading: "Got a question? Ask a customer!" When a prospect clicks on the banner, your website sends requests to your network of brand advocates (who've given their permission for you to do this, of course) so that whoever is available can answer the question.
Fuggetta claims that using existing customers as advocates in this way has allowed one of Zuberance's clients to achieve astronomical sales conversion rates of 25%. In other words, one out of four prospects who ask questions of existing customers end up purchasing the product!
5. Give your best customers promotional offers to share.
Once you've developed your network, you can get them to share your special offers with friends and colleagues in the same way they share cute-kitty videos and interesting news articles, using whatever social networking platform they prefer.
Such offers can range from special discounts and coupons (for consumer products) to white papers and invitations to webinars (for B2B products). The trick here is to make the offers easy to share and have an easy way to give your advocates a heads-up that the offers are available.
Interestingly, such sharable offers are more effective when customers don't receive any compensation for sharing them. Turns out that giving existing customers special gifts or discounts makes their recommendations less likely to be heeded.
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Packaging 101: Tips From a Branding Whiz

Packaging 101: Tips From a Branding Whiz:
Your packaging decisions might seem trivial, but they're not. It will be the first thing a consumer sees--and you want it to be a joy to dive into.
With toddlers running around our homes, we're always reminded how important packaging is.
Like most kids their age, when a box arrives, our one-year-olds often obsess over the wrapping--and completely ignore the gift inside. While we adults usually want what's inside the box, we're usually just as enticed by good packaging.
And there's no denying that the first thing a customer will notice is your packaging. So how do you create smart, branded packaging that is attractive and also conveys your company's message?
When we set out to create Altruette, we had a specific look in mind for our packaging but we didn't know how to turn our concept into a finished product. Like most first-time entrepreneurs, we had zero expertise when it came to packaging. We admired the shape of a box that Lee had stumbled on years earlier but had no idea how to actually get it made.
There are numerous box makers who are easy to find online, but it's difficult to distinguish one from the other without seeing their products in real life. So Lee set out to a packaging trade show at Javits and found a few promising leads. We priced them out and weighed the quality vs. cost and settled on a German company with an office in California. They did great work--but, even so, it took months to get a sample and to receive our entire shipment.
But when we set out to create a new line for a younger generation (altruette girls), which launches in a few weeks (more on that soon!), we were less sure about what we wanted. We knew we loved our original boxes but we also knew that this next line needed to connect to our original look but work for a younger generation. It had to be more of an evolutionary process and we needed someone to guide us. We asked around but had no luck finding anyone through our network.
So after hitting a few deadends, we went on LinkedIn and started searching. We stumbled on Drina Karp, a freelancer in New York City, who had worked for some pretty impressive brands (Kate Spade, Marc Jacobs, Vera Wang, Godiva and Biotherm). Her portfolio of past clients caught our eye and lead us to reach out to her directly.
We worked closely with Drina to come up with the look of our upcoming launch. We asked her to walk us through the process. Here's how she does it.
How do you work with clients?The creative process begins with the concept. This is the most important stage and it's the most time consuming. Sometimes I have a creative direction based upon a brand's established identity. With a launch, I have to create a look based upon the ideas communicated to me from the client as to what they hope to achieve. This is where communication is so important. Learning the questions to ask to be able to create a design concept, considering the marketing objectives and intended audience, that will satisfy visually and insure the brand a success. I present my ideas, I receive feedback from the client, sometimes there are revises, and a direction is chosen.
What should the client be thinking about early on?
It is important for a client to be able to communicate to me their needs. Marketing objective, target audience, designs that inspire them, their budget, and any production concerns are all a part of the picture that needs to be communicated so I can create a design that inspires and answers their needs.
How can you test a look of a package before taking it to market?
Most companies create printed "comps" of their designs to get a realistic product that they can look at. This really allows you to judge a product. If anything needs to be changed, you will know it. No one wants to find out after a product is produced that other decisions might have been preferable. Trust me, you'd rather spend money to test the package before the launch rather than end up with thousands of boxes that aren't perfect.
If I have a vision in my head of what my packaging should look like, how can I communicate that to you? Should I draw something? Should I write down my vision?
Clients are generally inspired by other products they have seen. I ask them for the names of what they like, or what they do not like. It doesn't have to be a similar product. I can be directed to a website or e-mailed images. If they have a specific thought, they can draw it if they are comfortable drawing, or just share it with me verbally. Depends upon their skill set. I do think it is so important to get a real understanding of the visual history of a company, so I will ask for past products, or printed material that are relevant to our project. Large companies will have created marketing briefs with an analysis of goals and visual direction, which can guide the conversation between the client and myself.
How do you convince clients to let go of their idea (if it's not a good one!)?
A tough question. I am being hired to give my design direction, and I will always do my best to lead the client to the most satisfactory solution. When a client knows their product and their audience, I find a collaboration between us--my experience with theirs and the back and forth--will lead to the best solution. I am being hired because of my previous work and my design sense. So if I am hired for a project, we are usually in agreement and the conversation flows back and forth creating the best resolution.

Most projects work this way but a client might also see something that they like which does not excite me. I would discuss with them our goal and try to explain how the new idea works, or might not work, to resolve the design. I will do my best to make them happy and give them what they visualize. But I would also present a design that would satisfy us both, bridging any differences.

You're Not a Zombie: 6 Ways to Shake Up Your Sales Day

You're Not a Zombie: 6 Ways to Shake Up Your Sales Day:
In a rut? Here are practical ways to pull yourself out of the daily grind and back to loving your job.
Let’s face it: sales can be a grind.
On the bad days, there is no job as regimented, as rote or as repetitious as a salesperson’s. If you are an outside rep, your airport/flying/rental/meeting/hotel cycle can destroy one of the true joys of life. If you are an inside salesperson, you call your leads in the morning, email your pipeline in the afternoon and repeat.
Falling into this mindset is a form of living death. Your brain activity fades. Your waking hours blur. When you dream, it’s in your telephone voice. You have a telephone voice! When the bad days stack up in rows of five, when the unending stream of follow-ups, cold calls and manager check-ins become habitual, you know. You have become a “sales zombie.”
This is not you!
Your life is not inexorably like this! You might feel trapped in routine, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you examine it closely, sales is actually the most random, freewheeling, challenging and bizarrely fun job you can have. Here are seven ways to recapture that chaotic freedom--and not one of them involves getting yelled at by your boss.
Remember We're All Human
Although you might get 30 new leads a day, 150 a week, 7,500 in a year, every single one of them is a human being. Even at the worst run companies, marketing departments don’t put dogs on lead sheets. Every single person you talk with every single day has (or had) a mom, a hobby, a tragedy, a moment of glory. Take 10 seconds before you make your next call and remember that.
Print this out and tape it to the top of your monitor: “I’m talking with another human being.”
Pay attention (no, really pay attention). There’s a lot more information available to us than we normally grasp. Did they pick up on the first ring or the sixth? Is this person inside or outside? What’s that humming in the background? People express much more to each other than we normally realize. Pay attention to your prospect’s tone and word choice. Why did they say “cold cuts” instead of “baloney”? Do they have a runny nose?
Get off the script. Drop the canned intro and the rehearsed responses. Move to a genuine conversation as soon as you can. Of course you have an objective--you want to sell this person something! But reading from a script is the worst possible way to do it. Remember: You are talking with another human being. This is what you are good at. This is why you are in sales.
Cut the crap. Bad calls, rude people, the frustrations of leaving yet another voicemail, another unreturned email proposal... these happen every day. You must become an expert in dropping the crap before you start the next conversation. Everyone does it differently--stand up, walk around, get a drink of water, joke, watch some YouTube, whatever it is. Don’t carry that crappy feeling from one bad call to another.
Clear-cut your pipeline. Your sales pipeline is like your basement--you accumulate stuff there that you think you might use. But you don’t, and more stuff comes in. One of the best ways to shake up your sales day is to blow away your pipeline. It sounds radical, but it can be liberating and productive to simply cut any deal that you haven’t worked on in thirty days. Or delete any opportunity that won’t close this quarter. Your timeframes will vary depending on your sales cycle, but be aggressive. You should aim to erase 50 to 75 percent of your total pipeline value. Now, suddenly, that cushion of imagined, delayed or doubtful deals is gone. You aren’t fooling yourself anymore.
Speed up. Sometimes you need additional speed to reach escape velocity. On your next call, talk faster than you normally do. Instead of contacting 40 people today, do 80. At 3 p.m. on a bad day, I will occasionally run from one meeting to another just for the hell of it. This is fun in airports too. Everyone thinks you are late for a flight, but you are just running for the sake of moving faster. Rapid acceleration from our normal pace. There’s nothing like it.
Slow down. Sometimes the endless attention-grabbing activities are distracting us from what really matters. Are you really spending your time working on the most important thing? We should all be more skeptical about how we use our time at the office. Is this meeting really worth 20% of your day? Pausing to consider, evaluating our activities, just going to the bathroom once a day without checking your email, all these little actions bring perspective to our work day.
Life as we know it is precious and fleeting. And remember, we sleep through a third of it. Luckily, we work in the strange, pressurized, intense world of sales. We make our companies go. We bring in the revenue that pays everyone’s salaries. It’s an awesome responsibility, and it cannot be done if we are walking dead.
So, please try these small and subtle ways to shake up your day. And, share your best suggestions for waking up below.