Hey, it's beautiful out there, it's sunshiny, it's time to go out and enjoy life, and the best way to enjoy life is to be able to afford what it is you want to do that you enjoy doing the most. So I'm going to talk about something here that I think will help you succeed in living your best life, living your fullest life.
I want you to not just say it, but prove it when it comes to the fact of whether or not you're doing enough activity to give you the opportunity to hit your financial goals in the sales and business development profession. This isn't a real long message this week, but it is something I find to be vitally important.
So a couple of things, when I say, “don't just say it, prove it”, the way you prove it is, you've got to track it. So you've got to tell yourself the truth, and the best way to tell yourself the truth is keep a scorecard. Don't just think, “I think I did enough prospecting this week, I think I asked for some referrals, I think I gave some referrals, I think I'm doing enough.” Don't just think it, prove it. So tell yourself the truth. Keep a scorecard, review it on a weekly basis. Adjust your scorecard as you need to to keep you on the right level of activity to give you the right results.
Don't use your ATM to balance your checkbook. Why do I mention that? Look, in this age of modern convenience, where we don't do things with paper and everything's available at three clicks of a keyboard, or you can just insert a piece of plastic in a wall mounted bank teller. Your ATM balance isn't always your true balance. It doesn't tell you what's really going on. So you may think you have enough money in your account when in fact you don't.
So don't run your prospecting bank account like an ATM. Actually look at it and balance it, not monthly, but every week. Take the time to count it, and I'm really serious about that. Color code your activities: red for prospecting, green for first meetings, blue for decision meetings, yellow for “gold” to follow the yellow brick road to Oz for successful wins.
Take the time to count it and see if you're really as consistent as you'd like to be to get you the consistent income that you'd like to have. What gets measured, gets done. So the things that you're willing to be accountable for are the things that should be making you as successful as consistently as possible, because consistent activity, whether it's consistently low or consistently high, will produce you consistent low results or consistently high results.
So do yourself a favor. Tell yourself the truth. Just don't say you're prospecting enough. Prove your prospecting enough. Because prospecting is the first step of business development success. Thanks for your time and attention today. Have a great weekend, everybody. Get ready to get up and go on Monday. Build great relationships, build great business, build a great life.
