What are the best ideas to optimize your business?
Work Life Balance
Maintaining an optimal work life balance is a key component to success in business, sales, and life in general. Achieving balance here can make or break your progress and long term success. Take dedicated time, focus, and energy to ensure this is optimal.
Physical Health
Often, when we are consumed with our business, we forget to take care of ourselves, which in turn can impact your ability to show up your best. Ensure you are taking care of the vessel that is your body and from there your results will improve in every area.
Mental Health
Just like our bodies, our minds are critical to our overall well being and success. Your mind is your most powerful weapon. When used for you it is your most important asset. When used against you it is your most dangerous enemy. Make mental health a priority and guard your most valuable weapon with the utmost intensity.
Spiritual Health
This can mean different things for different people, and is not necessarily religious (although it can be). Get in touch with the forces that guide you beyond the mental and physical, and let the inner peace that comes radiate into different areas of your life and business.
Personal Relationships
Often, what is going on outside of work in your personal life has a direct impact on your professional performance. Your relationships, like many other things, can be a major lift or a major drag. Choose the former when choosing who to allow into your life, and eliminate that latter completely.
Remote Work
If you haven’t already realized this, let me hit you with a reality bomb – remote work is here to stay. If you want to attract and retain top talent, have remote work as an option, when possible, is a game changer. This will allow you to compete on a higher level and could potentially reduce overhead, in addition to several other benefits.
Promote an Environment of Safety
Ultimately the people on your team must be able to give and receive feedback, and in order to do this in an authentic way they must feel safe. Creating and providing a safe environment where people can feel comfortable to truly speak their minds will increase engagement, decrease attrition, and elicit the critical feedback needed to optimize.
Get ahead of attrition
By far, the biggest killer to any sales org, and often business in general, is attrition. Running in circles trying to recruit, hire, train, and coach new people as existing people leave is a drain on resources and will set back progress immensely. Do everything in your power to get ahead of attrition ensuring your org is one where people will not want to leave.
Transparency
A huge part of how you build trust within and org, and in any relationship really, is through transparency. Be transparent when at all possible and appropriate and use transparency as a mechanism to build trust and rapport with those you work with, your clients, and yourself.
Motivation
Keeping your people and yourself motivated can at times be tricky. Knowing the underlying mechanisms of motivation and applying them consistently is a major factor in overall success.
Methodology
Specific to sales, there are many sales methodologies out there. I like to say that sales is part art and part science. Choosing a tried and true methodology and training on it massively so that it is actually utilized will help organize your entire playbook and optimize your results.
Have Challenging Conversations
Having tough conversations can be hard at times, but it is one of the most important muscles you can strengthen in leadership, business, and life. Sometimes we have a tendency to avoid these conversations, which only exacerbates the issue even more. Build your skills here and get experience having these conversations elegantly and effectively, and you will drive success while building respect with the people you interact with and with yourself.
Culture
Culture has become a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot these days in business, and for good reason. It is one of the main reasons why people stay or leave an organization, and it ties into pretty much everything you do. Establishing and maintaining a winning culture of inclusivity is a must.
RevOps
People often ask me: If I were building out an entire sales org from scratch, what is the first hire I would make? The answer is Revenue Operations. You MUST have someone in place that sets and leads the (data-driven) framework from which your decisions are made. If this is compromised, or worse not there, you are running blind and making decisions off gut feelings and guesses. While you might get it right sometimes, you will not get it right at scale and the ramifications are costly. Have this in place from the beginning so you can have confidence making the right decisions around strategies and tactics using data as the backbone.
Sales Enablement
Sales is both an art and a science, and it takes training and practice along with real world experience to really master the craft. Having a sales enablement motion in place to optimize and enable (hence the name) the team can be a game changer.
Power Hours
This is a common tactic used in outbound selling and prospecting, where an hour is dedicated to an all out blitz of outreach that the whole team participates in. Although most common with outbound dialing, the same principle can be applied to anything really, from outbound email to CRM maintenance. The idea is to get the entire team on the same necessary task going all out for a set period of time, and to build excitement, focus, and momentum from that framework.
Off Sites
In the world of remote work, and even prior to it, company and/or team ‘offsites’ have long been a useful mechanism to level up team cohesity and work through complex or otherwise difficult problems. Take the team to a new location and dive in deep, while strengthening relationships in the process.
Practice
What’s the best way to get better at anything? The answer is simple – practice. Practice with intention and practice deliberately, that is. A mentor of mine once said “You’re either practicing on yourself or you’re practicing on your prospects”.
Feedback
In order to truly know how things are going, and subsequently optimize effectively, you MUST be able to give AND RECEIVE feedback. Giving and receiving feedback are both skills that must be developed like any other skill, and often people do not realize how poor they are at them until something comes up. Strengthen these and you will strengthen your relationships, and your business.
One on Ones
If you are a leader of any kind you should be doing one on ones. In fact everyone should. Doing them effectively though, is paramount to success. One on Ones can either be something that people loathe or a critical piece that helps them grow and succeed. Choose the latter and run them with that intention.
Team Meetings
Similar to one on ones, team meetings can either be a crucial part of success, or a waste of time that everyone hates. Running effective team meetings establishes you as a leader that respects people’s time, abilities, and drives success.
Meeting efficiency
Learn how to say no to meetings that don’t move the needle forward, and be diligent in your commitment to not be someone who creates meetings frivolously. Meeting overload is one of the most common drags on a business and is easily avoidable.
Coaching
Being an effective coach, in business and in life, is paramount for success – especially as a leader. Your people must look to you as the go to for guidance on how to get the job done, and you must be able to coach them to do just that.
Development
Continuous development of yourself and your people, will ensure you get better as well as ensure you are filling the fundamental need that we all have to grow. Just like an organism that is not growing is dying, so is a mind and skillset. Strive to develop your skills and your people’s skills all the time.
SPIFFS
While this is not the end all be all to motivation that too often sales leaders lean on it to be, SPIFFS can be a useful mechanism to kick up some excitement and energy around a given focus and give some people a little extra boost. Don’t use them as a crutch though, and be sure people are prepared, motivated, confident, and focused for SPIFFS to be effective.
Departmental Congruence
One of the biggest killers aside from attrition that can make or break an org or an entire business is when different departments are not on the same page, working together towards one common goal. Make it your mission to ensure there is clear, effective communication across all areas of the org so that you prevent silos and ultimately drive optimal performance from all.
Communicate
Simple and critical – Communicate clearly, communicate effectively, and communicate often. With your people, your clients, yourself – everyone. Communicate and then communicate some more. I have never seen a business struggle because there was too much (effective) communication.
Talk to clients
We all have a lot of great ideas, that are great to us at least. Often we think so much of our own ideas that we forget to seek the opinions of others, like say our clients, who at the end of the day are the ones that really matter. Talk to your clients and learn what is really important to them. What problems are they facing? What would make their lives easier? What would make them happier? In these answers lie the focus of your business.
Diet
Maintain healthy eating habits so that your mind, body, and soul are in peak performance consistently and your work, and subsequently your success, reflects that. A poor diet will lead to poor performance elsewhere. An elite diet is the stuff of champions.
Water
Proper hydration is one of the most important things you need for optimal health and wellness, and is also one of the most commonly forgotten, which is strange considering how easy and simple it is. A good approach is to build into your routine scheduled times where you drink some water. You’ll thank yourself for this.
Invest in Yourself
We make a lot of investments in life, the most important one though, is investing in ourselves. Whether it be something that improves your skill set or something that promotes your wellbeing, investing in yourself is the best investment you can make.
Read
One of the simplest and easiest ways you can develop your mind, improve your skill set, sharpen your focus, and expand your horizons, all at the same time, is to read. Develop this habit daily and ALWAYS implement what you are actually learning into real world action for maximal effectiveness.
Walk
Going on a walk is a great way to clear your mind, get exercise, and overall feel better. It can provide a break to the stresses of the day and help you break through a difficult problem. Walking through nature is especially effective, as is walking with no external stimulation (headphones, music, etc.).
Network
A mentor of mine once said “your network is your net worth”. Getting good at networking and consistently building up your influence and connections will pay huge dividends long term.
Contribute
Whether it be to your people directly, your community, or the industry as a whole via posting online, blogging, etc. contributing your knowledge and helping those around you is one of the best ways to build your brand, network, and pay it forward.
Gratitude
A daily gratitude practice puts your mind in a state of abundance, taking you from expectation to appreciation. If you approach your life and business from a place of abundance and appreciation consistently, you will be unstoppable.
Tech Stack
Optimize the tools you and your team uses to drive efficiency, remove barriers, and improve results. It doesn’t have to be the fanciest or most expensive, just what is best for you and your business. Identify what your major blockers are and what will move the needle forward the most, and start there.
Forecasting
The biggest question on execs minds is whether they’ll hit the number, whether they’ll miss the number, or if they even know. The ability or inability to accurately forecast can make or break a career and has huge consequences on both ends of the spectrum. Optimize your knowledge, CRM habits, tech, and execution on forecasting so you can stop guessing and start making confident moves to grow.
Budgeting
Figuring out how to properly allocate your budget in the most effective way possible, and successfully executing on the budget plan, are two of the more challenging aspects to running an org and a business. Get good at these skills and prevent a lot of headaches down the road.
Accounting
If you’re a small business owner, use a cost effective tool to manage your accounting from the start. This will come in handy down the road when the business takes off and your books need to be in order.
Wake up early
Of all the self improvement/productivity hacks and tips there are out there, this one may be the top dog. Get up early everyday and get going before the rest of the world does. This will build momentum and carry you into success over time, more than virtually anything else. Don’t believe me? Try it for 30 days and see where you land.
Set time blocks
“It isn’t real unless you schedule it”. Ever here this saying? Well if it is true for meetings, the most of which are a complete waste of time, then it should be real for focus time, which if used correctly is among the best use of time there is. Schedule time blocks where you focus on one important thing and only that, and execute on delivering.
Focus
In general, we as a society are losing our ability to focus more and more as time goes on. The ability to focus is among the most powerful skills you can master and, like any skill, it can be gained or lost. Work on strengthening this muscle and it will show up in all areas of your life.
Discipline
Often people who appear to be unmotivated, or who think they are, don’t actually lack motivation – what they lack is discipline. Motivation is fluid, it goes up and down through time. Discipline is what keeps you on track when motivation is low. Strengthen your discipline and you strengthen your business.
Plan ahead the night before
With waking up early being as important as it is, you can supercharge the habit by planning ahead the night before. This way when you get up you can hit the ground running without having to think about what it is you need to do. With a good plan already set, you just attack.
Go to bed early
The best way to ensure you are able to get up early each morning is to help yourself out by going to bed early the night before. Research indicates that your decision making ability decreases as the evening progresses, and most people spend their nights escaping via some form of entertainment. Instead, plan your next day and get to sleep so that you can wake up early, refreshed, and use your time awake most effectively.
Get quality sleep
Going to bed early, waking up early, these are really only as effective as the quality with which you sleep is. When we sleep both our bodies and our minds recover. Most people aren’t getting enough quality sleep, so it’s no surprise that most people aren’t living up to their potential. Be one of the ones that do and take care of yourself and your environment so that you consistently get quality sleep.
Identify weak points
Zoom out and take an objective look at yourself and your business. Where are you strong? Where are you weak? The ability to zero in on these is a crucial skill because it lets you know where to focus. Use data to drive your approach when possible and get good at identifying your weak points so that you can take the actions needed to turn them into your strong points.
Find Support
It is hard enough to go through this journey called life as it is, don’t make it harder on yourself by going through it alone. Find support wherever is appropriate for you, via your spouse, partner, family, community, friends, etc. Having people there for you makes a world of difference.
Get a Mentor(s)
Long ago I learned of the importance of modeling. That is, finding someone who has had success doing what you want to do, and modeling the behaviors and actions that got them there in your own life. Getting a mentor(s) is a really great way to learn from someone who has the wisdom gained from real life experience, so that you know what to do and what not to do. A lot of times we get stuck not because we’re not clear on the what or the why, but because we simply don’t know the how. Get a mentor to help.
Visualize
If you can see it, you can achieve it. Ok maybe it’s not that simple (or maybe it is?), but the habit of visualization is something that I see consistently across high achievers in all walks of life. The ability to picture yourself having achieved your goals and feeling the emotions that come with it, before it happens, sets in motion a self fulfilling prophecy in the right direction. Try it out consistently for 30 days and see where you’re at.
Journal
Carve out a few minutes each day, or a few times a week, to write down what you’re grateful for, what your fears are, what your goals are, who you love, who loves you, or anything that you find helpful to express to renew your focus and mental clarity.
Eliminate distractions
Most high achievers actually look for what they can eliminate, not what they can add, to optimize their lives and their businesses. Throughout a given day we are bombarded with things that do not move the needle forward. Anything that does not bring you health, wealth, or happiness is by definition a distraction, and should be eliminated ruthlessly.
Put your phone away
In the same vein, but so prevalent it deserves its own place, is put your phone away. The technology and apps that are popularly used are designed specifically to steal your attention and to steal it often. Constantly checking your phone is a meaningless twitch that is a focus killer. PUT YOUR PHONE AWAY. Put it in a drawer, put it in another room, put it anywhere that you can not mindlessly reach for it without even knowing why. Over time you will kick the bad habit and build the discipline to have it on you without checking it.
Get off social media
Those ‘popular apps’ I was referring to? Social Media. Get off of it. If you use it for your business, which can be a highly effective strategy when deployed effectively, timeblock specific times for that engagement, and then get off it.
Tidy up your workspace
You’d be amazed what a little cleaning up around you can do to clear your mind and reduce anxiety. Although not true for everyone (Einstein was notoriously messy), most people will really benefit from keeping the workspace around them tidied up.
Study Psychology
Learning why people do what they do is in effect the essence of learning influence. If you understand people’s motivations, how to connect with them and build trust, you put yourself in a better place to coach, motivate, inspire, and lead them to greatness.
