5 Ways to Jump Start the New Year

0:04 Thank you for joining us at the Winning and Somming Podcast on Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems. So here we are again, a new year, and that gives us a feeling of a new start. Perhaps you already joined a gym or set a goal to lose a few pounds. Although the January 1st date is an artificial opportunity, there's nothing wrong with using it as a time to renew ourselves.

0:30 As a sales professional, there are plenty of good habits that you need to be successful. Are you ready to get going? So happy new year! Now get to work! As Scott and I discuss five ways to jump start the new year and other incredible items on episode 649 of the Winning and Somming Podcast. I'm guessing this is going to be probably one of the most downloaded episodes and hopefully it'll all of the activities that people are adopted be able to implement longer than 18 days.

1:01 That's how long the New Year's resolution goal lasts is about 18 days. 18 days? Well, you just have to go to the club and you skip the first two weeks and 14 days in she starts to slim down again. And I think how the clubs make all their money on people that don't come. They do. They don't want you to come. They just want you to join. And this is why they don't sell 18 day memberships. That's right. Oh, one year. One year.

1:26 One year. And they encourage you. Oh, you're going to look great. You're going to look great. How we find the same thing when people are trying to change their sales habits. Exactly. I'm going to use the quote later so I won't use it now, but it's very difficult for us to change what happens in our lives if we're not willing to change the activities that we do on a daily basis. It's that hey, and that's what we're going to learn about the one thing.

1:50 The one thing. Yeah. So we're doing the one thing with Gary Keller. It's there. We're going to cover chapters one and two and the first chapter called the one thing. The book introduces the central concept that achieving extraordinary success by focusing on a single most important task at the time. It challenges common productivity myths such as multitasking and provides insights into the narrowing focus that leads to better results.

2:18 What's your theory on multitasking bill? Because I have mixed reviews on this. Oh, I don't think it works. I think while we are as distracted. Yes. Work on one thing. Stay focused. If you want to do it for five minutes, do it for five minutes, but each time you break from a task, it takes you time to get yourself back into it. It's kind of like that impetus to get away from the TV or what you're in the laser boy, you're watching TV.

2:46 And it's just hard to get to hit the off switch and go do something else. And I think that same thing with multitasking when you're jumping back and forth to sit that on switch to get back into the task at hand, it's more difficult as you get distracted. And that's why they say turn off their dingers, turn off your notifications. Don't go look at those emails every time an email comes in. There's nothing that's that critical.

3:12 Look at it, you know, every two hours, maybe you spend some time clearing it. I'm guilty about that. But I think sometimes multitasking the other day, I was watching listening to Boston legal in the background and I was typing in my mileage so that I can get my taxes done as soon as possible. I consider that kind of multitasking and I'm listening to the plot and stuff like that. But it's something where I can get a menial task done and it's kind of mundane and routine.

3:36 I've talked to people on the phone and I can tell, what are you up to? What are you focusing on? Oh, I'm sorry. And you can tell are distracted. Active listening is so important when it comes to sales because you need to be able to listen to every single word and gather the information that you want to have. And the one thing I think what we do Scott with we skip listen. We go when you were doing Boston legal, you're listening to a little bit, then you focus and you go listen, then you focus.

4:01 And so because it's a fairly mindless task and you don't really need to engage your brain, you can go back and forth quicker. But if you're trying to, if you're trying to write a training program and you have that TV on in the background, oh, no, that doesn't happen. That's a whole different thing. That doesn't happen. I'm 100% focused on creating the workbook or the script or whatever we're working on. But yeah, I listen to music while I'm doing that, but I'm not listening to a TV show.

4:27 You're not singing along. Right. Exactly. So within this chapter, the next part is something had to give. And he tells a great story about hiring 14 people, having weekly emails, weekly meetings, and finding out that unfortunately many of them would not get all of the stuff done and they wouldn't even focus on what was most important. And it boiled down to, and here's that question. The whole book is built on this question is what's the one thing you can do this week such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary.

5:05 And I think that unnecessary part is where we start to worry about things that have no chance of even coming true or a very reduced chance of coming through. And when he boiled it down to just that one thing, you know, he started asking the people to focus on five things and they still didn't do it. That was three things. Then it focused on one thing he told his 14 people to do every single week and all of a sudden Shazam productivity just went through the roof when you just focused on it.

5:30 Because they started to get it done. Right. Right. They didn't let, and this is the challenge with your big to do list. You tend to start with the sea level thing. You take out the trash. Right. You're you know, headphones, you get ready to try all your pens out to see which ones are still working and your big pen thing. And then okay, now I have all I ran out of time. I guess I will get the printer and written today.

5:55 Now swap out the ink cartridges. That's right. All this administrative stuff. Oh, how many paper clips do I have? Not enough. I better go get a box downstairs. Yeah. All my coffee is empty. All right. But this one thing doesn't mean that you just have one thing to do every day. And I just really want to stress it's the one thing at the time that is the most important task. Well, it's also the one thing and this is comes from John Maxwell.

6:23 And he doesn't really talk. He talks about the five, three to five things. But I think this is a mix of it too. What are the things that you are uniquely able to do that no one else could do if you don't do it? I think we'll get into that later in the book. But as we just as we determine what that one thing is and when we drive it down to what's more important because you know, I could say the one thing is I need to take out the trash on Tuesdays, you know, that that's easy to do.

6:50 But really the one thing is I need to write that proposal this week. That's the one thing I have to get done this week or today. And then if I get that done, maybe I go on to another one thing that has to be get yourself focused on the most important thing. That's prioritizing. And that gets back to the Franklin Covey stuff way back. You know, Franklin Covey prioritizing your task, ABC tasks. Well, not only that, but it's it's don't put your time into non productive tasks.

7:19 Mm hmm. Tasks that other people with less capacity could be doing or could be done outside of the work time. You and I've talked about this with phone calls. Mm hmm. You got to make those phone calls when people are available. You can't put it off till five o'clock in the go. Oh, it's five o'clock. You can't make my phone calls today. Yeah. You know, you've got to block out that nine o'clock, block out that three o'clock and then sit down and make those phone calls.

7:44 Mm hmm. Yeah. Sometimes I think about what I'm working on right now with you and I are working on. We've got a packed week next week and we're putting together two workbooks and this is during the work day. No, it's a holiday today. But during the work week, when that's time where I should be talking with people, meaning with people and not doing a workbook. That's for me, that's a Saturday. That's an evening task to do something like that where it doesn't involve people.

8:07 Yeah. But that's true. That's true. But if that's become the one thing. You're right. Right. Now I got to get that done because the client that's already paid is expecting good work. It's prioritizing. It's like, okay, now this is the most important thing and this is the time that you're going to spend doing the most important thing. That's right. Maybe that's part of the concept. Well, and he's right. You know, his company took off when he got people focused on doing that one thing.

8:31 Right. Right. He uses an example of going small. And as soon as I read this, the first thing I thought of was Steve Martin back in that album. Let's get small. Let's get small. I went to those concerts when he put that album out. Oh, yeah. I read his book, Born Standing Up, a great book about Steve Martin's life, just a fabulous book. And he gets into prioritizing and ranking and the roles and responsibilities of focusing on going small and getting into the stuff that's a term that I've heard lately is micro learning.

9:07 So, you know, turn off the reels, turn off the YouTube shorts and start getting into micro learning. Okay. Well, that's going small, I think. And really focusing on that niche of learning something within a specific niche. I had a client in production and we had to get our learning down to 10 minutes. Wow. They could have a 10 minute break. But they had to be productive every hour. So, we had to design our training into 10 minute segments.

9:34 Yeah. That was micro learning. Right. Right. I highlighted a few quotes out of this first chapter that I like to share. One of them is where I had my biggest success, I had narrowed my concentration into one thing and where my success varied, my focus had to also to just focus on to that one thing. Another thing that he shared is extraordinary results are determined by how narrow you can make your focus. And lastly, you have only so much time and energy.

10:00 So, when you spread yourself out, you end up spreading yourself too thin. And that's true when you're trying to do too much in a short period of time. You know what I thought of when I read this was when I was a kid taking that magnifying glass and burning leaves out in the backyard. Yeah. Just one spot where you could get it focused. Mm hmm. Right. But if you're too close, too far back, right, it spread out too thin and you couldn't narrow that focus.

10:29 And so, I think it's a good visual when you're thinking, I need to get something done. I need to get that concentration of energy in this one thing. And that's why multitasking doesn't work because it pulls that focus away, pulls that focus away and I can't get that enough energy and momentum in myself to whether it's making phone calls or writing or whatever I'm doing that focus and don't get yourself distracted, get into that activity and do it well.

10:57 So chapter two is the domino effect. So this chapter explains and expands on the metaphor of the domino effect, which illustrates how prioritizing one impactful action leads to exponential progress. It highlights the importance of sequential success and long-term thinking. And what a great visual he paints with this one. Oh, you don't have the book. Yeah, you got to get this book and read along with us because- Let me give you the breakdown.

11:22 So I listen to it when I'm listening to the book, I'm reading the book and I just got to write this down. So it's imagine a two-inch domino and every time that you add a domino at 50% bigger than the two-inch domino, consider this. So imagine a bunch of dominoes lined up all increasing in size. So if there are 18 of them, you'd be as high as the Tower of Pisa. Increasing by 50% in each domino. Yes, yes. Increasing in size by 50% by each number.

11:55 So if you had 25 of them, you'd be up near the Eiffel Tower. And if you had 57 dominoes- It's increasing by 50%. It's increasing. You would reach the moon. It would be that tall. Wow. Yeah. You look at what, I mean, what a great illustration between chapter one and then getting into chapter two with the domino effect. So he finds that lead domino. He says, find that lead domino and whack away at it until it falls. Keep hitting that one domino that moves everything.

12:25 It's the mover, the creator. Yeah. I think that in the experiment that was done and what you're illustrating with this size is that they found that, you know, when we look at dominoes, they're all the same size. Right. This experiment that Scott's describing, they found that a domino could knock down one that was 50% larger than itself. Yeah. And so that's what he's saying is that each domino is going to move something, move you to that next step, to that next step, which is greater, that next step, which is greater.

13:00 If that's not moving you to that next step, you're kicking the wrong domino. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And in many meetings that I've been with him, he says, salespeople think they have a thousand days of experience. And what they really have is a thousand of the same experiential days, day after day. They're not kicking over the domino. They're not getting a little bit better each day. They're just doing the same thing every day.

13:26 And that's really the key. That domino has to kick over something that's bigger. Right. Right. And there's a strategic strategy and direction behind what you're doing, too. Yep. So the domino effect, this chapter, both chapters are very, very short. Some key phrases that came out of this is line up your dominoes and focus on one at a time. And success is a process, not an event. And I think that a lot of people think that when they reach a level of success, that's the destination.

13:59 So your time goes by. And if you're not maintaining that momentum, you're going to start dipping down again. And it's a process. So you have to build a routine and a commitment to do it in order to maintain the proven system over time. Yeah. He's starting this book really with the basics. And I would just encourage you to get this book if you haven't. Read along with us. It's going to double your learning rather than just listen to us go over some of the high points of it.

14:32 So next week we will be covering chapter three of the one thing with Gary Keller. All right. And for more expert selling advice, let's listen to the 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. Hey, it's Anthony Enorino. In my first book, The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need, I wrote that you should at least wait four beats after your client is done speaking.

15:06 And if you can practice this, you can give it eight beats, which is like this. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Okay. That would be a count of eight. Now, often when your client is speaking, they pause and it sounds like they're done with their sentence. But what they're doing is trying to figure out what they're going to say next. So if you give them that eight beat, that would be really good for you. But if you want to be a consultative seller, the first thing that you need to know is that you have to listen closely with interest.

15:47 And I want to tell you about what I mean when I say, listening closely with interest. A lot of times you hear people give you language. They say these words. They're trying to communicate something to you. But what you're really looking for is what they're not saying. What does their body language say? How do they respond when you ask them a challenging question, like a high-gain question? Then you have to pay attention to what is not being said as much as you're paying attention to what isn't being said.

16:22 And oftentimes, the thing that wasn't said is the thing that's going to cause you to either win or lose the deal. See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon. Wow. It just goes to show that the high-gain questions cause compelling reasons to change. It reminded me of the episode that we did number 616. I covered 12 questions. So we'll have a link to those 12 questions that people are.

16:52 616. That was almost a year ago. I know. I can't believe we're on 649, folks. We're almost to five years. We're going to be hitting April 1st. We'll be five years doing this. Now, over 250 different top podcasts for you to listen to. So all right. Well, let's get into our key topic. That's great. Scott. That's the episode. Yeah, that'll be on our show page. Yep. All right. Excellent. Five ways to jump start the new year.

17:20 So I was just thinking about the new year and I know it gets a little cliche to be talking about the new year all the time. But it is an event that we can use to get started again. And I was thinking about what are some of the things that salespeople, the biggest problem, Scott, that we run into with salespeople when we're talking to their managers and we're talking to them and we're going over what their issues are. So let's go through these and we'll talk about these.

17:47 Number one, activity you can use, clear out your sales funnel. We look at sales funnels all the time. We talk to managers, oh, we got, I got a hundred million dollars worth of business in my sales funnel, right? And my team sales funnel. And you go look at it and 90% of it is two years old. Right. And there and what I tell them is listen, that one is starting to smell pretty bad. Right. Let's get that garbage out of there.

18:16 And once we clean out the sales funnel, he finds out he has 10 million in real possibilities going into it and he starts to get worried. Right. Right. I remember we were working with one client and they took the job because there were 700 leads in their territory and then they got into the leads and they weren't leads. They were subscribers to their newsletter. And it's like, what? That's not a lead. Oh, yeah. Or we run into that, you know, we had a bunch of leads and we, we, so we're going to cut out our middleman.

18:48 We're going to cut out our channel partner. And then they found out that most of those leads came from their channel part. Right. Whoops. They thought they were going to do it themselves. So it's funny. But you know, it's just, it's just amazing. This hope that we have in our sales funnel when it's clogged with junk. And, and, and so we keep spending our time checking in and following up with the same people over and over again with some kind of mental blockade that makes us think we have something there.

19:19 And so we don't go do the work that we should do in creating new business because we think we're going to push this business over the, the goal line. This business is dead. Yeah. Give it to marketing, allow them to do some kind of a drip campaign. If the customer calls, you can reengage. You can use the tool that I like to use. Scott doesn't like this one as much, but I do like, and that is, Hey, Larry, it sounds like you want to tell me no.

19:50 Give the customer that's been sitting around forever a chance to tell you no. And if they don't take it, then say, let's finish this deal and get it closed. Those are the two options. If you don't want to tell me no, you want to tell me no, it's okay. I can take it. I'm big. I'm grown up. Yeah. And then I can get it out of my sales funnel. If you don't want to tell me no, we only have one other option. That's yes. Yeah.

20:13 Let's do it and get out of here. Right. And, and get this moving forward for you. So, so don't just leave this junk in your sales funnel, clean it out and find out you really only have about 10 or 15% of what you thought you had. And now you can get anxious and maybe you'll start making some phone calls, right? And creating some new business. Because that's your job as a salesperson, create new business, not just play with stuff that's, you know, old or work with leads that you get from marketing.

20:42 Right. Right. All right. Number two, rank your customers. So much of our time, I had a boss tell me once, don't give, don't get productive time to unproductive customers. Yes. Don't give productive time sales managers to unproductive salespeople quit trying to save your bottom 10%, put your time into your top 10%. Quit spending time with customers who aren't going to do anything. Just because they've been with us for 50 years, doesn't mean they get 50 years worth of time.

21:15 They already got it and they haven't grown a bit in 50 years. They ain't going to grow. So here's a criteria we use for ranking customers. You know, you can have different ones for your company, but here's what I like to use. Revenue, that's always good. Are they big? Are they big enough for me to spend time with that, that I need to spend time? So even if I have a huge customer and they're not growing, they're still a huge customer.

21:40 They're still one of my elephants. I have to give them the time because they're going to continue to create that revenue. That's my base for every year. What's their potential revenue? So I might have some smaller customers, but they look like they can grow. So they might rank higher because they have a chance to grow. What's their year over year growth? What did they grow from last year to this year? So if I have a company, even though they're small and they did 100% more business, well, let's give them some time, maybe they'll do 100% more like the domino.

22:09 If we can get them to double 10 years in a row, all of a sudden we're looking at a major client. Number four, do they pay their bills? Now we can have the biggest client in the world. And if they're paying the rear end, they don't pay their bills, they rank down. So a big client that pays their bills readily versus a big client that doesn't pay their bills readily, that second client ranks down. Number five, do they appreciate us?

22:35 Are they a good partner so that they like when we come and they're good to us? Or are they bitching at us all the time? You and I, Scott, we're doing a training and they were telling us about a customer that nobody wanted to talk to because every time he said, first I'm going to yell at you was what he said to the customer service provider. And we suggested, unless he's a big customer, get rid of him. Let your competition have this creep, right?

23:03 If they don't appreciate you, they're not worth your time. And then number six, do they agree with your value proposition? Or are they always looking for a discount? They're always looking for a better deal? That doesn't mean we get rid of them, but this means we rank them lower. We don't give them all the services because they don't want the services. They don't value what we value. So again, ranking criteria, revenue, potential revenue, year over year growth, pay their bills, appreciate our company and agree with our value proposition.

23:30 Any other thoughts on that, Scott? I'd like to add another one. Number seven is profit. Are they more profitable than others? Are they less profitable? Sometimes your biggest client can offer you the least amount of profit. They end up paying 120 days later. There's not a long term agreement on there. They provide the greatest percentage of revenue for your company, which means you've got a hiring commit to people. And you're making that decision and possibly maybe over exposing yourself financially when you're looking at ranking.

24:04 So profitability, I think. All right. Round off number seven. Good one. Now, see, I would say they pay their bills and they agree with our value proposition, means they're profitable. Right. But I do like having it be more overt to have profitability in there as well. Okay. All right. Number three. So we have clear out your sales funnel, rank your customers. Now, when I say rank your customers, that means you now change your behavior based on their ranking.

24:28 Right. Right. And the time that you give them and the extra effort that you give them, the unpaid benefits that you give them, those go with those higher rankings. And for some of our clients, it's a matter of saying, you're going to be working with customer service. I'm not going to visit you on a regular basis. You just can't afford it. Right. Not as frequently. Yep. All right. Number three. Determine how to use artificial intelligence.

24:56 AI is going to replace a lot of jobs. Don't let it be you. Let you learn to use that tool to make yourself more efficient and better. So learn to make it part of the value that you provide to your customers. So I'd let AI write something for me, Scott. And that was what are the 10 ways a salesperson can use AI. Number one, understanding customer needs. So you can get insights, predictive analytics from AI. Improving communications.

25:25 You can use chatbots and virtual assistants, speech and sentiment analysis. So you can use AI to improve your communication, to look at your conversations you're having. And get us more efficient with lead scoring and automation. It can deliver better recommendations for cross selling and upselling. Ask it. Here's what kind of customer I have. What can I cross selling upsell? Real time information. You can build better long term relationships, customer retention strategies, feedback, learning and development, training and coaching tools to identify the needs of the customer, performance analytics.

26:00 I can go on and on in this, Scott. This tool is a valuable tool. It's not that difficult to start using it. It's damn nearly free for the power. What do you and I pay? $20 a month? Yeah. Or for access to it? It can draw pictures for you. It can write music for you. It can analyze your customer conversations and give you. It's amazing what it can do for you. And if you're not experimenting with it at $20 a month, you're just going to get caught.

26:33 It's like not having a cell phone. It's not like not having a smartphone. Yeah. Or free. Your thoughts on AI. Or free. It's amazing how intimidating it can be. But once you start getting into using it, how simple it is. And I'm just amazed at how I could take an idea. I can do a transcript into a bot or an AI program. I can get a copy of that transcription. I can upload it to an AI program. And I can ask it to polish and clean this up.

27:08 And they can write a 500 word blog. I did this a couple days ago. In all about 20 minutes, all of a sudden boom, I've got a blog posted on the website. Boom, there it is. So simple and powerful and it's insightful. It tells you stuff that you don't really think about. We realize how much we base our actions on our own assumptions and think that we know everything. You punch something into AI and it's like, wow, there's half of this I didn't even think of.

27:30 And it really. If I was going to do this, again, now I had these five ideas in mind. But if I wanted to just pose a question and say, give me five activities or give me 10 activities that salespeople should do to get the new year started. It would come up with 10 activities. I could pick five that I liked and then think them through myself. I don't have to have it right everything. It can be a great idea generator. Yeah.

27:54 And you pick out some of the ideas that you want to use and clean it up and put it in your voice and now you've got a good tool. So yeah, yeah, powerful tool. Yep. Don't rely on it. Don't make it write your things for you, but allow it to be a guide and help you to do it. Number four, organize a development plan. So Scott, we've got 10,000 listeners every month. And here I'm going to challenge you. I bet not 10 of you are buying the books and reading along with us.

28:23 Wow. Yeah, that's probably possible. This is 10,000 around the world too. Yep. Yep. And so if you've got to get better at what you do, you've got to get better. You can't continue to live your life on mediocre. Here's what the quote I was going to talk about in the opening. I didn't use it. James Allen, men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound.

28:53 The key to growth is not making your boss get you more leads, not making your territory bigger. It's improving your own personal capacity. And you do that. I think I get the most out of reading. I get some out of podcasts. I get them out of blogs that I read, but picking up a book that gets me focused on a new idea like the one thing for three or four weeks at a time. Man, that's powerful. And I look back on the changes I had to make from being a dumb 20 year old kid who thought he knew everything.

29:32 I've been reading for 35, 40 years. I've read a, and you said we've read 17 books in the five years we've done this. Yeah. Yeah. And I've probably read five times that many on my own because I'm in three book reading programs. Wow. Wow. So a lot of time I took the strength finders test and learner is my number one strength. So when I feel like I'm in a, a bit of a, a rut, I just start picking up a book and I just start reading them within a few pages.

30:00 I just get my spirit back and then just get my brain working and, you know, off we go. And when we concentrate on our strengths, it's amazing what can happen. But on the quote from James Allen, when you use the word bound, you remain bound. Wow. What a powerful word. Sometimes I really feel like that. I'm not, I'm tied up. I'm stuck. That's my only, that's my own doing. And how do you get out of a rut? You commit to the behavior.

30:24 Just start making some calls, just start talking to people, start circling back to some emails that you sent a couple of weeks ago and didn't get a response. And you'll find out that that momentum that you create is going to create the outcome that you want, but you got to start with the action. Yeah, that's great. And the development plan is an action. And if you're not lucky enough to have learner as your, one of your key values, it's going to be harder for you.

30:47 I can't tell you the number of people I spoke to said, well, I read books in college and I swore I'm never going to read another book. Yeah. That's brilliant. That's brilliant thinking. So change the way you're thinking. You can't just listen. Sometimes you got to pick up that book, read the words on the page and think about what they're saying. All right. Number five, develop a personal territory strategy. Scott and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

31:10 You are an entrepreneur as a sales person. You've been given a territory and fortunately you've been probably given given tools. You have access to a company, to samples, to literature, to a sought to computer, to sales force or some other CRM. You've been given all these wonderful tools with which you can grow that asset. Do something with it, but you got to make a plan that says, here's who I'm going to work with. I want to try and create this year.

31:48 I have a list of 10 all the time of customers that I want to develop in my market, but you've got to have a goal list. You can't sit on next last year's accomplishment and waiting for customers to call you. Go out and do something different and a plan is the best way to do that. That's that daily. Here's what I'm going to get accomplished. If you don't have the resources, then make a deal with your supervisor, your leader, your manager and say, this is something that would be very helpful in generating more revenue, make my job easier.

32:23 I could provide more profitability to the company. Can we invest in that? Then that sales manager might say, well, I'm willing to invest in that if you're willing to invest in making a certain number or doing a certain activity or committing to this certain project, whatever it is. Make that deal to be accountable to each other and make the investments in the company. You're really making the investments in the relationship with your customers.

32:43 If one of the resources, then find a way to get the resources. It's really important to have those resources, but the best resource you have is between your two ears. That's taking the time. We're cutting this on January 1st. We're doing this episode. It really makes you think, are you going to spend two hours sitting down and saying, here's my plan for the year. I would tell sales managers. If you're letting your sales team get in with having no plan, then your whole group has no plan.

33:16 Your company has no plan. All the stuff your company is expecting is bullshit because you're not going to get it done. If the individual contributors, your sales team doesn't have a plan on how they're going to do it, you're not going to accidentally create your way to success. Plan it out. It's not going to happen by coincidence. All right. Let me go over those five again. Number one, clear out your sales funnel. Get the junk out.

33:41 Rank your customers so you spend your time with those most profitable customers and those willing to grow. Learn some ways to use AI. It's cheap. It's free to start and it's cheap if you get a little bit better version, a little newer version. So get some AI, figure out how you can use it. Organize a development plan for yourself personally and then develop a personal territory strategy to make use of your greatest asset and that is the territory you've been assigned to.

34:09 Right. We are recording this on New Year's Day. Whenever you're listening to it, if you're listening to this in February, you can start tomorrow. But I don't have to start at the beginning of the new year. Tomorrow is always a great time to start a new habit. That's right. Don't say all it's February 3rd. I missed the new year. I guess I'll wait till next year. No. Start tomorrow. Start tomorrow. That's the first episode that has the 12 questions on it, 616 and then Anthony Anne

34:42 Reno with the salesblog.com. So look for that. Our golden nugget is be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there by Josh Billings. That was in chapter one of the books. So those of you that are playing along at home, that's where you can find that quote. I love that quote. I go, we got to share it with the listeners. If they're not reading the book. Stick to one thing. Well, I tell you, we just get, that's why I just, you know, you and I disagree a little on the multitasking.

35:07 Yeah, I think, I think you, you just distract yourself. So focus, focus, focus. Yep. So all the information we have is at winning at selling.com. Those links that Scott talked about a little bit summary of this, the show and the show itself. This is episode 649. Next week we're going to be covering the hiring process and again, the one thing Gary Keller chapter three. So please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on your social media networks.

35:37 Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.