Have you ever dealt with a routine challenge and thought to yourself, “Didn’t I deal with this exact same problem last week?”
Of course you have.
Common mistake.
In fact, after you have been in business for a few years chances are good that you get into a fairly predictable routine each week. Unfortunately, even though you see similar challenges week after week, you devise a new way of dealing with them each and every time.
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Do me a favor. Tell me what you did this past Monday.
Tell me exactly what you accomplished from the moment you got into your office until the minute you left. If you’re like most business owners, your answer is something along the lines of “When I got to the office I had 137 emails, 4 voice mails and I just dove into it.”
Now, I want you to consider a similar question. If I asked you on a Friday afternoon what you got done during the week what would you say? Again, I typically hear something like, “It’s Friday already? I’ve been putting fires out all week!”
Unfortunately, I can’t promise you that planning will eliminate all of the challenges you deal with each week. However, I can assure you that a few minutes of planning each day will dramatically increase your productivity over time.
“But CJ” you’ll cry, “I’m working hard every day! I don’t take lunch and can’t remember the last time I got home before 6:30pm”. The problem isn’t the amount of hours you’re working. The problem is that you’ve got a lot of activity and very little achievement.
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C.J. McClanahan
Take a quick minute to answer the following 2 questions:
How many leads did you generate in the last 90 days and where did these leads come from?
How many of these leads did you turn into customers?
The answers to these questions will provide you with 2 of the most important indicators of the health of a business. Unfortunately, most business owners struggle to find answers to either of these questions.
Why? Typically, I hear that it takes too much time to track this information. But, after a quick demonstration of how easy it is to collect this data, I discover that the real answer is
most owners don’t understand how important this information is to their business.
Consider the following:
Studies show that if you begin to consistently track this information you should automatically see at least a 5% increase in the numbers – even if you make no improvements.
You are a school teacher and during lunch one day you discover that someone you love (son, daughter, mother, father, best friend, etc.) has just been diagnosed with a rare disease and given less than 6 months to live.
