Selling in a Crisis

27Own It!

You cannot manage time. This is an immutable truth. Time is inextricable and relentless. You cannot stop it, get it back, reinvest it, or recover it. Once it is gone, it is gone. Time is by nature unmanageable.

What is manageable is YOU – the way you think about time and the choices you make about time. Time discipline is a simple choice between what you want NOW and what you want MOST. Which is why having clear goals and knowing what you want is so important.

The key to taking control of your time and your sales day is making better choices. The bottom line is, you've got roughly eight Golden Hours each day to outsell the crisis. You have a choice:

• Dawdle those hours away, whining about the economy, your boss, non-sales work, bad prospects, fickle customers, or whatever lame excuse you are using that day to justify the fact that you are wasting prime selling time not selling.
• Own it! Plan your day, block your calendar, remove distractions, and stick to your guns when others try to corrupt, interrupt, or usurp your time for their use.

Owning it is the key to time discipline and gaining control of your sales day. Until you accept complete responsibility for owning your time, the crisis will own you. Owning it means no excuses, no surprises, no blaming. The buck stops with you.

• You believe that you alone are accountable for your success or failure.
• You take complete responsibility and ownership for managing your time, territory, pipeline, and outcomes.
• You are diligent ...