Stop Delaying and Get Going

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winning and Selling Podcast and Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Rich Development Systems. James Psychologist William James once said, Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hang on of an uncompleted task. Well, that's really true, isn't it? We know that we should strive to get more accomplished, but so often we find ourselves frustrated by an inability to get off our butts.

0:30 Perhaps we just need some good advice. So don't put this off any longer. Listen in as Scott and I discuss, stop delaying and get going. And other substantial subjects on episode 641 of the Winning and Selling Podcast. That's an interesting topic, Bill. I think some listeners are going to like it, some listeners are going to feel a little threatened by it. And if leadership hears it, oh my goodness, we're going to start having accountability and higher standards.

1:04 But let's talk about the book first. We have a new president coming up, so the election is over with folks. Hopefully you'll be able to find a positive outcome in whatever stance you do. Yeah, there's some good. It's some bad, right? We all win some. We all lose some. We'll see what happens in the next few years, right? Right, right. But I hope that everybody had a chance to go out and vote. Our book, New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg, we're doing chapter 9.

1:29 And the topic is, Your Friend, the Phone. And I really never felt that way myself. I think. I tell you, the phone is still the best instrument to use to generate a pipeline. He starts off the line with, there's a strong belief that we no longer have to make proactive telephone calls to prospects. And then he continues, says, this is a wonderful excuse not to do the most important yet incredible unpopular sales task that we must do every single day.

1:58 Well, that's what he was talking about the sales 2.0 people, right? Yeah, exactly. And then he says, no, you just do a lot of social media and they'll come flocking to your network. They're working and everything that's fun. And I think that's good to do the things you enjoy. But I had a boss that told me once, you still got to do the 20% you hate. Yeah, you can do the 80% you love. So making a phone call is something that you need to do.

2:22 You need to start reaching out. When I sold real estate, my broker came by and said, Hey, Scott, I got news for you. Nobody in the office is going to buy anything from you. You got to get out of the office. Right. Just like sales people need to pick up the phone and talk to somebody that they don't know. And I think that there's a lot of temptation to look at the email marketing and sales automation. I mean, sales automation, do we really want to do sales automation when we're sending emails at 2.30 in the morning?

2:49 People know that that's not a real person. How many emails that you get from LinkedIn people that you just linked in with six minutes ago? 80% 80% of the time. How many do you respond to? I have none. None. I unconnect with them. Boom, boom, gone. So yeah. And I know that that person didn't even know that they were connected because they're hiring somebody else to do all the work. And I would say, you know, if you have a chance at a relationship, take it.

3:18 If you have a chance at a relationship, take it. And so often on the phone calls, we need to look at building a relationship and not always be. Focus on just a transaction and making a sale. And he talks a little bit about that later on in the book. But I would say, if you can take a call, you can make a call. If you can take a call, you can make a call. And that's what proactive telephone calling is. Once we view ourselves as professional problem solvers, this perspective should make us want to call targeted customers.

3:45 This is out of the book. As targeted customers would want us to talk with them if we offered value in the conversation, we have to have that mindset. And that perspective that we are problem solvers. We always say we're problem solvers. Let's go out and let's find some problems. Let's be a problem finder now by making phone calls to people and introduce ourselves and schedule an appointment or have a conversation. Well, I think a lot of people just don't know what to say.

4:10 So they call in and they say, hey, this is Bill. How come from reach development systems. How you doing? And we do training with guys on stuff. So you want to give it a shot? They just don't have a good way of saying things. And that's one thing I liked about this chapter is he has a few turns of phrases that are very powerful. I use different ones myself, but I'm considering changing some of those because I like some of the things that he is talking about.

4:41 He goes on and he talks, there's a lot of resources in this chapter. We won't be able to get into all of them in great detail. But he talks about he's a big fan of call outlines, not necessarily a script, but scripted talking points, not necessarily written out. I mean, keep in mind the prospects don't know their speaking lines. When you have a script, the prospects don't know what they're supposed to respond to. So you kind of be maybe left out on the cold.

5:04 And I'm always wondering how many of our listeners by raising your hands would make a list, have a list of the top 10 questions to ask every prospect during the first phone call. Okay, you can put your hands down. Thank you. I didn't see a lot, Bill. I didn't ask you. That's because we're on audio, but you can't see anything. He was looking around people. What are people aware? What's he talking about? What are we, what are we missing?

5:27 I think I like, you know, I've always called it a call outline or a script, but I do like calling it a call outline. You don't have to get locked into one way of saying things, but you should know where you're going in the conversation and have a few things that you want to say. And I like the thought that you're bringing in. You ask questions. You don't just make statements and blather on it. That's what people hate about a phone prospecting call.

5:55 Hi, this is Bob with, and you can't get a word in edgewise, but if you have your script, it includes questions. If you're, what does he call it, a call outline includes questions. Yeah. Yeah. Then you're involving that person, guiding them like you would in a discovery. Mm hmm. And you really stress the importance of specific words. That's what he calls them talking points, a consistent phrase that you reiterate as part of your brand, part of something that you're speaking to them in the subconscious.

6:28 And you're also using a certain theme to be able to counter the competition. If you do it in the right way, you're going to be able to get people thinking about what you're offering when they're asleep. And then they call you next day and give you some very, very good news. Mm hmm. He talks about in this chapter, what is the goal of making a call for inside salespeople. He says it's to complete the entire sales transaction, including follow calls.

6:54 For outside sales reps, he says that the goal of that is to set an appointment, is to get a face-to-face appointment bill. So what do you think the goal is of the first conversation that you have with a prospect? Well, I agree. For me, it's to get an appointment with them to try and meet with them face-to-face. But the goal to have that happen is to catch their attention with something. The line I use is what we've been able to do with other companies, is help their sales team to become more effective in the way that they do discovery.

7:28 I don't know if this is something we could do for you. We'd help other companies like X, Y, and Z. I don't know if there's something we could do for you, but I'd love to sit down and have a conversation. Yeah. Yeah. No, because that's where I want to go, but I've got to catch their attention. I can't just tell them how wonderful I am. But I just have to do a little bit of that. He talks about pulling out one or two of your talking points that you made, your value points that you made in your sales story and using those in the call.

7:56 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people want to ask that. They'll tell me, well, I need to educate the prospect. I go, I'm just educate them on what? Well, educate them on who I am. I need to educate them about the company. I need to educate them on my products or services. I need to educate them. I'm like, okay, how about if we take a different perspective on this? And how about we follow the mantra that let's educate to influence, not educate to teach?

8:21 And what we should be really teaching them is what happens if they don't buy from us today? So what are the cost consequences and risk of them not taking action in the purchase of our product or service? What's going to happen to them if they don't? That's really what we should be teaching them to concentrate on losing something that they now have as a potential solution if they take action on it. Right. And I think that's why we mentioned a few things we've done for other companies or what we do well because we are really kind of shooting in the dark. Right. Right. We don't know if this person needs these two things that we're going to mention. We're good at this or we've helped another company do that.

8:59 So if those things get some traction, then that person might say, well, yeah, that's, you know, we are having problems, closing sales. We are having problems with our administrative tasks being done. We are having problems with our CRM. Okay, maybe I'll have it. You know, it'll be worth sitting down and talking to you. But if I get the feeling that you're going to talk at me for 20 or 30 minutes, I think you're going to be in trouble.

9:26 And that's why almost everybody that we are learning from and coexisting with in the sales marketplace is talking about bring value to that first appointment. And I want to sit down and give you a 10 minute briefing on what's happening in the sales world. What's changing? What's different that you might not know about that we're trends that we're seeing. And then we'll talk about how those trends might be affecting you.

9:53 And that's a better first appointment for many people than to say, I'm going to tell you everything about my company and I'm going to make up a few things and I got a great four hour company pitch that you got. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or they do that and then come back with a four hour presentation about stuff. It's not even interesting. Some people when I when I've asked that goal of that first appointment, they'll say it to qualify the prospect. I said, okay, I don't disagree with that.

10:19 But where did the list come from that you're calling on? And there's probably a good chance that everybody on that list is qualified. And I never heard and he's and this is out of the book. Mike Weinberg says, I never heard of anybody going out of business because they were too busy calling unqualified prospects when they're calling from a list of their uniform universe that's within their qualified list. Yeah, I think too often we think, oh, I'll make sure that this appointment is worth it for me. Yeah. Right. And I think in one of our just our recent tips from Anthony, he talked about not over qualifying the prospect.

10:57 There's no there's no problem with asking a few questions, but really what you're trying to find out is, do they have an interest in what you do, what services or products you provide if they do sit down, have a conversation with them. Now, I did for a while when I was just doing a ton of phone calls early in my career, I got so good at it. I would have people sit down with me and not know why they were sitting down with me.

11:22 And I would ask a few questions and I'd say, so why did you sit down and he goes, and they would say, I don't know, I just was really a good phone call. And you know, I'm calling on sales managers. So they want to see that. But if you're hitting that, you know, 20 or 30% of the time, maybe you need to start qualifying a little bit more. Until you get to that point where they're going, I don't know why I saw you, but your phone call was so great. Don't worry about it. You're not getting too many under qualified people.

11:51 Right. And you certainly don't on your phone call. You're going to have enough money to buy this or what? Yeah, talk to the budget right away. I don't work with cheapskates, you know. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's it's really a great chapter. There's some great content in it, some conceptual beliefs and also some technical scripts that you can use as they cause them talking points, you know, scripted talking points.

12:16 So it was a really a fun chapter. Great. You need to be prepared for that phone call so you don't just babble. Right. Right. That's why we prepare for these sessions, these podcasts. So we don't babble too much. True. Too much. That's my fault. So next week we have a guest in a book club. Right? Yep. Correct. Well, for more selling advice, let's listen to this sales tip from Anthony. Enjoy and learn from the sales tip from Anthony by Anthony Enorino, a highly respected international speaker, best selling author, entrepreneur and sales leader.

12:47 Hey, it's Anthony Enorino. Today's question is, how can I be a peer more confident? You can only do one of those two. You can either be confident or you can appear to be confident, in which case that will not be the same as having confidence. You cannot appear to be a confident because what you will be is a poser. I used to play rock and roll when I was a kid. I was on the stage, always performing. And always in the back of the room, there were a bunch of people who were wearing leather jackets with long hair who never picked up an instrument, but they wanted to pick up girls.

13:21 So that's what they were doing, is trying to be a poser so it would look like they're in a band, but they weren't in a band. So this is the same for you. If you want to be an expert and have the confidence that you need, you have to do the work. So you have to do the reading. You should read everything that you can about your industry. You should read about the kind of clients that you call on in their industries. You should spend time with people who already know how to have a great sales conversation.

13:51 And if you ask them to be ascribed so you can take their notes, they might let you sit and listen to them, ask the questions that they ask. And anything that you can do to improve your effectiveness as a salesperson, so learning these things. But if I gave you the last thing that you would want to do, it would be the one thing that would help you more than anything. Get a group of people together, sit down around a table and start role-playing, because the more you get comfortable with the language that you're using, the more confidence you're going to be when you're sitting in front of a client.

14:24 See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon. Well that was really good. And I think one of the things you brought up earlier Bill is what are the trends in the marketplace? I think if you have value, the knowledge that you have is valuable, and if you can share that with the right people, they're going to want to have a conversation with you. Yeah, you've got to be giving them something. You've got to be bringing something to the conversation.

14:52 That's why it's more hard for new salespeople. But what you can bring if you're fairly new is questions. Right, exactly. Good question. So, all right. Let's start talking. Let's not delay any longer. Let's get into our main topic, which is to stop delaying and get going. Just a couple of quotes that I really like. Procrastination is from Don Marquis. Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday. And Rita Mae Brown said, if it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

15:24 I was working in advertising for a while. And we did all of our ads and we got them. Had to get them done by four o'clock on Friday afternoon. No, four o'clock on Friday afternoon. So they would get to the newspaper and they were rolled. They were done on big sheets. This was before electronic. They were rolled in big sheets and they were put in the... And FedEx came at four o'clock. And I remember one person saying, man, what did we do before FedEx?

15:51 And my boss turned to her and said, we did things on time. Right? That's a great line. Because the mailing time was Monday, we got the ads done on Monday. Now the mailing time was Friday. We just postponed it and everything was being done on Friday. So the last minute, that sense of urgency does get us going. But I think we need to be careful. All right. So why do we procrastinate? A couple of things is I was doing some investigation on this.

16:21 Why do we procrastinate? We have a fear of failure. Some people have a fear of success. I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want to do something wrong. Number two, not knowing the results of our actions. So we don't know what the repercussions are. So we do nothing at all. It's the inaction that you talk about all the time in selling. Right? We think we're making a decision or we think we're holding off on a decision.

16:44 What we're really doing is making a decision to not do something. And so if we do that enough, we're not doing anything at all ever. We're busy. So we're choosing other less difficult actions. A friend of mine said, you know, you can't just be taking out the garbage all the time. It looks like a beneficial action, but it really doesn't matter in the long run. So it's something to keep us busy. So look at your task list and say, how many of these things am I doing that are just busy work? Somebody else could do them.

17:15 Lazy. I saw a speaker once write, say busy and write lazy. I thought that was really good. I could. I've tried it. I can't say busy and write lazy. But lazy is on the other side of busy. You call it making bad time choices. Right. You make bad time choices. You know, the election was last night. I felt very involved in it. I watched a watch late. There were some things I should have done while I was watching and I didn't.

17:42 It was just kind of goofing off. So I made some bad time choices. I think also we make bad choices because someone else will do it for us. If we wait long enough, someone else will pick it up. Avoidance is too hard. So I don't want to think about it. That happens to me with emails. I don't want to think about that email right now. Instead, I should handle it right away. And then it also gives you. This is a weird one I found. It gives you an excuse for poor performance.

18:08 Oh, I started late. So I had to hurry. I was so busy and I had to hurry. So that's why this thing is a piece of garbage. Then we can talk about our priorities. And when there's something that's a little bit more acceptable of a priority. We didn't do this because an acceptable priority was higher up. It is an excuse for poor performance. I'm always amazed that sometimes it's a fear of loss. If I become more successful, if I do something that's going to push me ahead, what am I going to give up? Is that going to be more time?

18:40 I have to give something up to accommodate this new success. Or what am I going to be obligated to that I don't want to complete either? Yeah, I think sometimes we know that if we are successful, we get that raise. We get that new job. We're going to be expected to do more. We don't want to do more. So we don't work really hard to get that. And then we're disappointed that we don't have maybe enough money to do the things that we want to do.

19:05 So we get into this vicious cycle of procrastination. Here's the results of procrastination. Instead of fake failure, I thought I might fail. We have real failure. Exactly. Right? So we're worried about failing. So we do nothing. And then we're really failing. And then we're forced to do something. So how many people, Scott, can't get themselves started on something until it becomes a crisis? Oh, I use this now all strong. Right.

19:38 Right. I use the saying is your commitment greater than the consequences. And just think about the word commitment, the greater than sign and then consequences. What does that mean? What are the consequences if you don't pick up the phone and make an attempt to talk to 25 people you don't know today? What are the consequences? Well, you might be out of a job. So is your commitment to stay in your job, provide for your family greater than the consequences if you don't do anything?

20:04 Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think that we think that there won't be consequences or we hope there won't. And then when the consequences come, then we try to ameliorate them. And it's really difficult to do because now the problem is past us. We have missed opportunities as a second idea of real results. We don't get to do what we want to do. We wait around, we horse around, and we don't get it. Don't get to do it because the opportunity passed. It reminds me of a, I used to have a shell silver stone record.

20:35 He wrote where the sidewalk ends. Real good kids author, but he's also like a super vulgar human being. Really? Yeah. He's got like two sides to him. He's got like the adult side of shell silver stein and the kids side. And we go, oh, these kids will go. She all silver steins. So beautiful. And then he writes songs like, I got stoned and I missed it. And I will sing it. Here's the lyrics. Then my friend yelled through the transom, grab your coat and get your hat, son.

21:02 There's a nut down on the corner giving dollar bills away. But I laid around a bit and I had another hit and then I rode myself a bomber. I thought about my mama. I fooled around, played around, jacked around a while and then I got stoned and I missed it. I got stoned and I missed it. I got stoned and it rolled right by. And I think that's people's lives, man. Maybe they're not getting stoned, but I had to play a game on my phone and I missed it.

21:29 I had to watch another TV show and I missed it. I had to go play old man softball for the fifth night in a row. And I missed opportunity. I woke up late because I can't listen to an alarm. I fell asleep in front of the TV again. I got stoned and I missed it and that's their life. Oh, that's hilarious, Bill. That's so true.

21:56 I mean, you can tell that you know who you are, folks. You know that's a missed opportunity as a real result in life. You don't have to get stoned. You can just use other things that get in your way. Another result is disappointment with yourself. Right? What they say, I never, I'm never going to go to my grave and when I, when I'm about to die, I don't say being, I wish I had watched one more TV show. Right? Right. Right. I wish I spent more time with my kids. I wish I had tried harder to accomplish things in life.

22:31 So disappointment comes from lack of focus. Yeah. And then the fourth one is getting left behind, missing the bus. Right. Because other people won't wait for you forever. Yeah. I think that's something you have to realize is that if you're sitting around goofing off, you're going to, you're going to, you know, your best friend. He accomplishes something. He moves on. He gets a college degree. He, he gets a new job. He starts his own company.

22:57 And instead of saying, Hey, good for you. Let me try harder. You say, Hey, come on back to me. Come on back to my failure. It's so comfortable here and warm until, until it's too late. And your friends won't wait for you. And those people that you hang around are really, really important. And I think if you analyze how other people solve problems and what problems they have to solve, I think you learn a lot about what kind of caliber person they are.

23:22 Again, if you're the smartest person in the room, I think you need to find another room and find people that are smarter that can contribute, that can inspire, that can introduce you to a higher standard and make you accountable to achieving it. Yeah. We're talking about, we're talking about the power of association. Right. Exactly. Who you associate with is who you're going to become. The books you read, the movies you watch, the audience, you listen to the YouTube's you watch, the people you associate with. That's your future.

23:52 And if it's all low brows, if you're watching Homer Simpson, all the time, there's your association right there. You know, do, do, do, do. All right. So before we wrap up today, let's talk about some strategies to defeat procrastination because even though I talk, you know, from a high horse here, I procrastinate on things. Scott knows that I have a method for dealing with that. We just had to do it a couple days ago. Get my get me off my, my snide. So here's a couple things. One, create a daily task list.

24:30 You can't get things done if you don't know what you're supposed to do next. I know we don't want to get totally task oriented, but there's a good first step. The second step is prioritize the task list. So everything on that task list isn't equal. And what you'll be tending to do is do the easiest things first. What I would recommend is you put things in the order because you can do a hundred easy things and not have a good day. You can do one hard thing.

25:00 And your day is great. You got talked about making calls. You make your 20 calls, all of a sudden your day lights up, but you have that one hard thing on your to do list that you hate to do. What do you call it? The big hair. The eat the frog or something. Yeah, you got to eat the frog. Yeah, I thought it was a frog. Eat the frog. If eating the frog is a bad thing, do it first, get it over with. You will be surprised how much more wonderful you day goes when you finish something that was a little bit difficult for you to do.

25:36 So prioritize task list is number one. Thoughts on that Scott? Totally true. I love the prioritization. I make kind of a weekly task list. There's stuff that it's on there that I get done this week and I need to figure out the task within the time. And I put stuff on my calendar too. Yeah. And that's number two as we block some time. So if in that task list you say, okay, this is a eight hour project. I don't have time. I don't have the capacity to work on it for eight hours today because there's other urgent things that are going to come up.

26:04 But I can work on it two hours a day for the next four days. Don't just hope to find two hours, right? Put it block of time. Maybe it's an hour in the morning and hour in the afternoon. Block out that time so you can focus and concentrate for that long period of time on that difficult thing to do. Do not try to multitask. Turn off your webdingers. Turn off your anything that distracts you turn. Even go to a different office if you need to get away from some distractions to focus for one or two hours on that difficult task.

26:41 And you will move it forward. You might find it doesn't take you eight hours. If you can focus, you might find you get it done in two days. And man, what a great feeling it is to have that done. So block that time off and you don't have to say to your colleagues who might see your calendar. Calendar. Calendar. Oh, he's just working on a project. I can stick a meeting in there. No, sir. No, sir. This is a meeting. You call it a meeting. It might be a meeting with yourself to do a project, but it's a meeting and it's as sacrosanct as anything else.

27:15 And if your boss says, well, listen, Bill, I know you're just working on that project. You say, do not stick a meeting in there. I won't go. And if you make me go, I won't get your project done. Right. So what's your choice? All right. Number three, I learned this from a programmer. They do these sprints. So they'll put the timer on and they'll have something on their task list and they're going to set the timer for 15 minutes or half an hour.

27:41 And it's one of these tic-tic-tic timers. It has a ding at the end. Most of them are electronics now. But set that timer and see how much you can get done in 10 to 15 minutes. It's faking an urgency like I got to go. I'm going to go on a trip this afternoon. I'll tell you, I'm going to be super efficient this morning because I have six or seven things to do before I can leave for that trip. Right. And so get yourself some kind of sense of urgency. Any thoughts on those block?

28:14 I think that's great. And like you prepare for vacation, prepare for that just like every weekend is a vacation and always get stuff done Friday before you end up having to come into our Monday morning. You know, one habit. I didn't write this down. You just made me think of this. That a friend of mine who was in the military talks about, he's a trainer as well. Great guy. But he says, make sure your desk area is cleaned up and tidy at the end of every day. Put everything away. So your desk is all just like your locker and your bed had to be every morning.

28:50 You don't have that. You can't leave a sloppy mess behind you. And I'm glad we don't have video so people can't see my sloppy desk. But that's a new commitment I'm going to make to myself is to try and get my desk cleaned up here before I go off for a couple of days and and come back to a clean office where everything's organized and when I need to find a task, I can find it. All right. The next one. Begin anyway. Don't worry about having everything right. Like I said, my desk isn't clean. Don't worry about cleaning.

29:21 Aristotle said, well begun is half done. Just get started. Sometimes we just have this mental block that keeps us from getting started. I heard a speaker once said he goes 123 go. And then he starts his task and he just he uses that as a little implementer to get him started in the task. Right. Right. Interesting. Set a deadline. Now this is the one trick that I use all the time. Scott knows I do this because we work with clients together. But if I don't set a deadline and set an appointment with the client, it will my project will just drag on and I'll always find a reason to not do it.

29:57 So if I have an appointment with a client next Wednesday, I'll tell you I'll have that project done before Wednesday. I have it over to Scott to look over and edit. He'll send it to me for re edits. And we'll have it done before that appointment. If I don't set that appointment, it'll slip to Friday and then it'll slip again and it'll slip again. So make that appointment with your client. Make that appointment with your boss when the project doesn't have a deadline. Create a deadline. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I like to reward small steps. So when you break a big project down into small steps, do something.

30:32 You know, maybe you can't do this and take your dog for a walk until you do this. You can't go get that cup of coffee until you do that. And now make them small rewards. It's not like you know you do a little bit of the project and get a two week vacation. You know, it's just small rewards. You can have a little ice cream. I have that piece of candy. Just little things to reward yourself for accomplishing each of the tasks on your list. Now, if I make it candy and I have a lot of tasks, I could get fat by the end of the day.

30:59 So be careful of that. I heard a great line from one of our good friends, Kit Welchland. He says, you want to be able to reward the behavior and celebrate the results. Right. And it's a good model to have. That is good. All right. Number seven, develop a project timeline and stick to it. As Scott and I started to work together and we've done about six or seven projects together now. We're starting to develop timelines.

31:23 Those timelines help us look at because we may have three, four, five projects going at one time. And if we don't set up a project timeline for them, they'll get lost in the shuffle. So the project timeline really helps us to stick to something. Be accountable to a mentor or to a manager. Again, that's another way of kind of faking a deadline. But you say to your boss, your boss says, I need to get this job done. You say, when you want it done by, oh, I'll do it in a couple weeks.

31:51 You know, look at your future and say, you know what, if I let this wait a week, a bunch of stuff is going to happen next week. I better get it done this week, even though the deadline isn't. So I'll say, Hey, let's let's meet on Friday, at least to go over where I am on it. Right. I think that's important is to work with somebody else. Again, I hate to keep using this example, but it's got and I have worked together more week. We're much more productive because we're accountable to each other.

32:17 Yeah. Right. And then number five, or number nine, destroy distractions. What is it that gets in your way? Is it YouTube? Is it a game on your phone? Is it a phone calling a friend? Is it Facebook? What are the things that distract you and keep you from moving forward? They are not as we said earlier, you're not going to, you know, go to the end of your life and go, man, I'm sure glad I hit level 27 million on friendly farmer or whatever it is.

32:51 Right. Our bubble pop or whatever. Those are just distractions. And maybe, you know, here's a challenge with even rewarding yourself with one of those. You get involved in the Internet is, is. Created to distract you and pull you in a hundred different directions. You may need to turn your Internet off and not be using it for a while. So whatever you need to do, but destroy those distractions. Yeah. I'd say, look at the things that you have to do anyway. I pay my rent on the 20th and it's due on the 1st. I don't pay it 20 days later. I pay it 10 days early. Guess what? It's the same amount.

33:27 Rent is the same amount. And you're not making all that much interest anyway, right? But 7 cents you have made, right? But when it comes to negotiating my lease, they go, oh God, the guy who pays his rent on time is even early. We'd like to have more of those tenants like that. And all of a sudden, my rent doesn't go up as much. Why? Because I end up making more money. I'm paying it early than the interest that I lose over 10 days.

33:51 Not being a problem renter is a good thing to have. I've talked to friends of mine who have rental properties. And the thing they're worried most about is will they destroy it? My property and it can cost me $5,000 to re-fix it up each time somebody moves out. The kind of person you are and procrastinators procrastinate everything. Their dishes are dirty. They're dishes are a great example of not procrastinating. If you do your dishes every night, you have maybe 10 or 12 things you have to do.

34:23 A few things just stick in the dishwasher. Some things you have to do by hand. And then it's done. If you wait three days, it looks like an awful mess and you're running out of the things you need. But there's people out there that haven't done their dishes for 10 or 15 days. And they've got this pile and there's flies. It's just awful. Things you have to do, you do every day so that you keep yourself organized. And there's some things that this made me remind myself to clean that desk off is a big thing for me.

34:53 I leave too much junk around. Cleaning my office is a goal I'm going to have. I don't know if I'll get it done today with the things I have to do, but that's a goal I have. It's got any last thoughts from you? Not everything goes in the dishwasher, Bill. Everything goes in the dishwasher. No, Mr. Batchelor. I didn't hear anything past that. Let me close with this quote by Abraham Lincoln. You've heard of him. You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

35:22 So be a procrastination killer and go out and get off your butt and get everything done. You need to get done. So our resource today is Anthony Enorino, the sales blog dot com and our golden nugget is failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough by the endino. That's in the greatest salesman in the world. It is. I love that line. I thought of that line as soon as you pick this topic. I go.

35:50 I know exactly what quote I'm going to use. I love augmentinos quote. Yeah, he's great. I'm doing that. So there's so many great books out there. Stop procrastinating and read one of them. Everything that we talked about today is at winning at selling dot com. This is episode 641. Next week we're going to have a guest Jennifer Fernjack is going to talk about ways to address emotional labor in the workplace through science.

36:15 That's a very complicated title. It is. It's going to be worth listening to. I think there's going to be a lot of tangible points in that. And again, reminder, no book club. So please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on social media. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.