Idea of the Week - Total Selling Systems

Warren Wechsler's
Idea of the Week

How Can I Get It All Done?

Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Some restrictions apply to the use and distribution of this information. For more valuable materials, visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com. All materials and content © Warren Wechsler, 2001 – All rights reserved.

This is the Sales Idea of the Week segment. This is a late, breaking sales idea of the week. I had another one prepared, but a little bird on my shoulder told me that I should change it. The sales idea of this week is what do you do when you're under stress and you've got lots of things going on, and you're not sure if you can accomplish all of them in the same day? I have a friend who just told me this recently, that there's so much going on, they've got lots of activity going on. How can they get it all done? It's very challenging and very difficult.

I'm going to give you a very, very simplistic answer, and that's this week's sales idea. Whenever you're under stress, whenever you've got way too many things and you're over-scheduled, usually what's happening is that we've got all this information in our head. It's all stacked up in there. "Oh, I've go to go over here. I've got to do this. I've got to write that. I've got to call them." It's so overwhelming we don't know where to start. Even when we make our attempt we're so scattered that we tend not to do the things well. And all of a sudden we're running in quicksand; we're falling down in the mud; nothing's going well. It just becomes almost like running on a treadmill where the belt keeps going faster and faster and faster, and pretty soon you fall down on your face. Bump! Bump! Bump! Bump! Bump! Bump! Bump! You fall down and things are terrible and you just want to go have an ice cream sundae. Having an ice cream sundae is not terribly bad but it's a copout.

So here's what you do. When you're under stress, take out a piece of paper, and write down all the things that are on your mind, all the things you know you have to do. Generate a list. I don't care if it's three pages long. Get it all out on paper.

After you do that, go through that list and prioritize them. I'm giving you three categories. A is vital and important. It's something that is so important, and it's urgent, and it has to happen right now. B is either urgent or important. Either it's time and deadline sensitive, or it's something that's really important, so it's one of those only, not both. And C is "Why is this on my list? It's only there to get it out of my mind and to get it on paper."

Go through you're A's first and look at all those A's, meaning, "Urgent, important, I gotta get to this." Find the highest priority, highest pressure item on the list. Find your A1, as I call it. It's the first A on the list; it's A1. All I want you to do is clear your mind, take a deep breath and exhale, and then just work on the A1. Don't worry about A2, A3, A4, A5, A27, A28, B1, B39, B52, C1 through C99. Just focus on A1. What will happen is your mind will settle down, your tension will disappear, and you can focus on doing one thing well. And when you do that one thing well, you cross it off, which makes you feel great. Then you move on to A2 and then A3. Keep doing that over and over and over again. This is the way we reduce stress when we're under a lot of pressure. That's this week's sales idea.

This was a partial transcript from Warren Wechsler's weekly radio show. Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com Also, listen to Warren's weekly radio broadcast Wednesday's at 4:05 - 5:00 pm Central time, on KMCD-AM 1570AM. Shows are broadcast live on the internet at http://www.warpradio.com/asx/KMCD-AM.asx