Love a process – achieve a goal!

Sometimes we need to hold our nerve and trust the process. Have a clear goal, do the right things and the right things will happen, in the end. It can take time though and we need to be self-critical and challenge what we do and keep tuning it up along the way.

As technical sales rep, in the late 1990s, my sales management drove me to achieve 8 appointments for 4 days of each week. I was covering the North of England and Scotland and quickly worked out this was impossible. It used to take 4-8 phone calls to get one appointment and sometimes, asking the right questions, and constantly tuning them, the appointment objective could be achieved by phone. So, no need to meet in person too. I could hit my sales quota, without hitting the process objectives (the 8 appointments). 8 appointments per day was not a leading indicator of success for me.

What was my strategy? For me I’d mark out 2-3 appointments and amplify that to 5-10 discussions every day through cold calling and asking for referrals.

To manage myself and the, at times, crushing rejection of the “Sorry, I don’t have time to meet…” calls – especially during those freezing February days - I discovered assigning a value to every phone call made. For example, achieve £5,000 sales by making 10 phone calls a day and each call is worth £100! No more wasted phones calls now.

Fast forward to 2021 and let’s talk about running!

It’s my pleasure to be involved in the ‘You Can Run!’ programme at my running club, last night our 12 intrepid runners achieved a 30-minute non-stop run. It’s the 9th week and in week one they achieved 8 minutes of running, in 1-minute bursts, interspersed with 1-and-a-half minutes of walking. They started walk-running and now they are runners!

The process goal of 3 runs per week is a leading indicator of their success in running 30 minutes in the 9th week. The gradual increase has made them feel proud and with beaming smiles of achievement!

And Finally

For you/ your business/ your product the time available to achieve may be limited and you can hear the clock ticking. Be confident in your well thought out process goals, ongoing feedback and tuning. Constantly review progress, challenge methods and priorities. Trust the process.

Deep breath! You can do it.

Release Life Sciences and Diagnostics Ltd (RLS) helps individuals, inventions, teams, technologies and organisations to release their full potential and achieve growth.
After understanding your unique situation, our mission is to enhance capabilities and increase capacity fast, and when you need it the most.