[This is the eleventh post in a series about how to overcome the setbacks we all face in sales. For the first in the series, click here.]
Establish or Reinforce Productive Habits
Does it sound boring to be a creature of habit?
My cousin Anne would rather be dead. She sees herself as a free spirit. Her family see her as a mess.
Thirty years ago Anne said she thought she had the cure for cancer hidden within her. It must have been buried very deep. Anne has never studied any of the sciences. She quit college the semester before she was to graduate, and she never got around to going back.
Anne’s been through every trendy detour from her first crush on Marlon Brando in the ’60s to her most recent crusade for the benefits of ionized air. She studied witchcraft for a few years in the ’80s. Maybe that’s where she thought her cure for cancer would come from.
Anne has been consistent only in her inability to accomplish anything.
She’s an extreme case, but plenty of the rest of us can also be blind to the power of our own destructive habits.
When we’ve experienced a setback or a failure, it pays to evaluate our habits honestly. What role did they play in putting us where we are?
Here’s an example. It’s easy for me to slip out of the routine of prospecting for new sales every day. A few years ago I got busy on a few big deals, and that gave me the perfect excuse for avoiding one of the things I least like to do. My boss even believed it.
Before long I got out of practice refilling my sales funnel, and my pipeline went gone dry. I survived for only one reason: We were growing fast and had more opportunities than sales people to handle them. I got some new assignments that saved my tail.
I could have avoided that situation if I’d maintained the habit of prospecting even when I felt too busy. I should have blocked a few hours a week on my calendar to be sure I’d do it. The momentum of routine would have kept me out of trouble.
Habits are a mixed blessing. Over your lifetime they’ll drive you toward the inevitable results of your accumulated actions or inactions. They move you in small, almost unnoticed steps toward the life you want to live. Or maybe away from it. While habit is one of the most powerful forces you can enlist to get where you want to go, it can also be one of the more challenging obstacles between you and your goals.
When you’re driving a route you know well, how much concentration does it take to stay in the correct lane and turn when you should. On roads you travel often, you can handle nearly everything that happens without much conscious thought. Sometimes when you get where you’re going, you can barely remember having made the drive.
Here are a few examples of the kinds of habits that can move you toward your destination:
- Waking up early each day to make time to focus on the most important priorities in your life.
- Committing the most productive hours of your workday to the things you absolutely must get done.
- Regularly going to bed at the same time so you’ll get enough sleep.
- Calling home at the same time each evening to stay close to family when you’re working late or out of town.
Professional musicians practice for hours each day to find the right notes without hesitation. Pro golfers establish a pre-routine that’s exactly the same for each swing. Good basketball players use the same setup before every free throw. Good sales people use consistent processes from one deal to the next.
Once you’ve found your groove through practice, you can stop doubting whether you’ll get it right the next time. When you can eliminate the dark clouds of performance anxiety, your attention is more available for productive thinking.
What’s the difference between a groove and a rut? That’s easy. Ruts are unproductive habits. Grooves are productive ones.
Ruts are deeper than grooves, so it’s harder to get out of them. Once you’ve done the hard work of getting out of a rut the first time, you have to fight for awhile to avoid sliding back in.
To stay out of your old ruts, it helps to establish new habits that get you past them. For example, if you want to quit drinking a cocktail every evening, switch to wine. To quit drinking wine every evening, switch to sparkling water with a lemon slice. Find new grooves that give you more pleasure than staying stuck.
Psychologists say it takes about 30 days of consistent repetition to establish a new habit. For a lot more great information on this and other topics related to a field called positive psychology, I urge you to visit to the Positive Psychology News Daily and www.senia.com, the blog of its editor, Senia Maymin.
Protect Your Rituals
You’re more likely to establish a new habit if you can turn it into a ritual. Rituals are routines that give you deep emotional satisfaction because they feel sacred. They’re habits with a higher purpose or meaning. For example, you wake up in a hotel room and leave a tip on your pillow for the housekeeping maid. You do it because it’s good karma to show honest gratitude. Your maid has a hard life or she wouldn’t be there.
Rituals are important to protect because they reward you with a sense of stability and well being. Feelings of well-being can be especially important after something in your life has pulled the rug out from under you.
My advice: Fight hard to guard your rituals — especially when you’re feeling off balance.
What habits or rituals have you found to be most important to your success and well-being? Please share your comments.
Stay fresh.
–Scott Silverback