Make Work Your Best Friend

If you don't like to be preached to, then this post isn't for you. I am not preaching about religion or even raw vegan food. This post is about work.

Work is my best friend. Through hard work and disciplined effort, I have earned freedom.

What do I mean hard work? Well it sometimes it means being the first one in and the last one out of the office for a sustained period of time.

It means following up on all interactions the same day. Without fail, I return every commerce related phone call and every commerce related email before I lay my head to rest.

This applies to my clients of course, to my team members and vendors/partners and even sales reps.

Having been in sales in one capacity or another for most of my adult life, I have a lot of compassion for what it takes to sell. I don't mind being sold to and in some situations, I like the aggressive sales person that has passion for what they are selling and how it could help me.

I find it easier in the long run to say no, not interested, no shot, if that's what I feel. There are considered decisions that take time and I will do my homework and ensure I make the best decision and if I get pressured, that will turn me off. Therefore, selling is as much of an art as it is a science.

What's really important about working hard is doing the important things first. That sounds so simple, yet it's so easy to avoid doing them and focus on whatever comes up. Time is not forgiving. A call that should have been made today, is far less effective tomorrow. A thank you note mailed the same day after a meeting loses its efficacy with every hour passing.

We live in the age were most people have multiple computing devices, cell phones, laptops and desktops. It's very easy to sit down at the computer with an important project at hand. A project with huge financial upside and somehow get distracted by checking your stock portfolio, reading personal email, searching for something obscure on eBay, checking your web analytics.

All of those things seem interesting and important, but the fact is they hold you back.

Part of my hard work is completed by developing tools that make me successful. Salesforce.com is one really powerful tool. In some respects it's priceless if it's used correctly and worthless if it's not.

There are many ways to use a tool like saleforce.com, but to me, the juice is all in my stage 4 report. We track all deals by stages. Stage 4 is the stage where you gave the client a formal proposal, Stage 5 is a verbal or a nod, Stage 6 is closed. Stage 4 is where the action is and I make sure that I live in my stage 4 report and look at each client and ask myself, do they need a phone call, do they need an email, should I show up at their office?

It's now approaching 2am. I just finished reviewing my stage 4 report and took the necessary actions.

Did I mention that I left NY last night and took a connecting flight from NY to Chicago to MSP to save $400 and avoid the Northwest Minneapolis monopoly. It was risky because there were winds in Chicago and all flights were delayed. We sat on the tarmac in LGA for 2.5 hours and as a result, I thought I would miss my connecting flight because we were arriving 1.5 hours after it was scheduled to depart. Turns out everything was delayed, so I did manage to catch the flight, rent the car and get to my hotel by 1am.

Then I logged in to the VPN, checked my email and started making calls to my team in SF asking where was this and where was that?

Then I had brain work to do. I had to review my prior notes, research current activities and mentally prepare a strategy for each meeting. This was the hard part, thinking through what I could say that would be most relevant and most differentiated.

I literally sit with my eyes close and walk through the entire meeting and write the script. This helps so much.

Another discipline, is writing up my notes and my action items while they are fresh in my head and taking action.

So my little trip to the Twin Cities took exactly 24 hours of which 20 of them were work.

I love it. I feel the positive impact. I know that the hard work will pay off.

On a related note, a close friend forwarded me an email resignation that they received from an employee who left without notice. As I read and re-read the email, I saw so many opportunities for that person to have worked harder, taken more initiative and more responsibility. It read that the company had the same problems now that it had when they started.

Isn't that interesting. That a person comes to work, sees problems and just observes them over the course of a year.

It reminds me of a little situation that I experienced a couple of weeks ago walking Ahimsa by the river. There was a huge pile of dog poop on the path near the water fountain. It was smeared a bit as a result of a few unsuspecting walkers stepping in it, but it was still largely in one place.

I watched about a dozen people walk by it. Some had dogs. Everyone exhibited a level of disgust, but no one did anything. At that point, I took one of the Bio bags out of my pocket, bent down and picked that shit up and dropped it in the trash.

It took me about 30 seconds. Granted I was repulsed, but I felt good after I did it. Less because of protecting other people from stepping in it. That's nice, but because I felt it was helping me to develop the habit of doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, whether I like to do it or not.