Anyone that knows me really well knows that I am not naturally organized. Note, mind you, that I didn't say that I was disorganized. I said that I was not naturally organized. There is a difference. Let me explain. Naturally disorganized people must work a lot harder than naturally organized people to be organized. The point is this: Just because people like me were not born as organized as a lot of others is no excuse for being disorganized. Self discipline combined with developing and practicing some good habits allow me to avoid catastrophe. In the profession of sales, time is money. When you work in a hourly job, time is money, too, but for a salesperson, time can represent a lot of money. The more hours you can spend selling, the odds are high that you'll make more money. And the fewer hours you spend spinning your wheels, the more time you have to sell. Several years ago, I learned the value of checklists as a tool to help me avoid some of the pitfalls of being put on this earth as a naturally disorganized human being. Here's an example: When laptop computers became affordable, I was one of the first to own one. My first laptop was a Toshiba with -- now get this -- no hard drive. It only had two diskette drives, but I loved it. The laptop allow me to write -- and make corrections to what I wrote -- at least 20 to 30 times faster than writing by hand. During the week, I don't always take my laptop home at night, but on Saturdays, I make it a practice to bring it home in case I want do some computer work over the weekend. My office is about a 15-minute drive from my home, so on an occasion or two, I have arrived at my office and realized that I had left my computer at home. So off I go, driving back home to retrieve my laptop. While this thankfully doesn't happen very often, when it does, it costs me 30 minutes that day. Do you know how much time you've lost when you lose 30 minutes --as a percentage of a day? Approximately 6% of a typical selling day. In his new book, 57 Ways to Take Control of Your Time and Your Life, Jim Meisenheimer ( www.meisenheimer.com) suggests using 1% of a 24-hour day (15 minutes) to plan how you are going to use the other 99%. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? This is where checklists come in. Stop relying on your memory to remember to do important tasks; use a checklist. Make preparing a checklist a part of your daily activity planning process. If you don't carry your own PDA or Blackberry, I have found it helpful to keep a 3 x 5 card in my pocket and jot down the critical tasks I must perform that day. At the top of the list on Monday mornings is "take laptop to office." This past Friday, I had four appointments outside the office: 12:30 p.m. blood test
1:30 p.m. haircut
3:00 p.m. dental hygienist
5:30 p.m. take car to get new brakes To remind myself of where I had to be and when, I had each appointment on my 3 x 5 card. Checklists allow me to do it right the first time. I took to heart the old saying: If you don't have time to do it right the first time, where will you find the time to do it all over again? Anytime I have to drive some place I've never driven before, I make it a practice to log on to www.mapquest.com and print out a map. It takes me approximately five minutes to log on, type in my starting point and my destination and print out the map. If I wait until the last minute to do this, I have no choice but to wing it, usually getting lost a couple of times en route. So on my checklist that day, I will remind myself to go to www.Mapquest.com. Checklists also can prevent a waste of personal time. How many times have you packed the car and headed down the road to begin your family vacation, when you or your spouse realized that you had forgotten to pack the camera? Most of us have experienced this or a similar situation. How about preparing a standard checklist that you can use each time you and your family go on a vacation? You can use such a checklist time and time again, adding and deleting items as necessary. If you carry a laptop or Palm Pilot with you, it's a good idea to program the device to sound an alarm a few minutes in advance of the time you are supposed to make a phone call, meet a customer, meet your spouse for lunch, etc. Try my 3 x 5 card idea for a daily checklist and let me know if it works for you. |
