Every one of us gets up and goes about our daily business with certain routines. These routines are called your daily method of operation, or DMO for short. As an entrepreneur, it is especially important to have a DMO that is driving us towards our goals. But have you ever examined your DMO and taken stock of how many activities are really growing your business and serving you?
Try this exercise to do a quick audit of your DMO. Grab two sheets of paper. On one sheet, write down everything you did yesterday that pertains to building your business. This includes any training and “mindset” activities as well as business-building actions like calling your prospects. Do this for every day in the past week, and look for patterns in your behavior. Take an average of how much time you spend on the phone, on social media, etc. and note how long that is.
On the second sheet, look at how many minutes and hours you actually spent with revenue producing activity. That means something that actually rings the cash register. The only things in this category are activities that actually drive business – like being on the phone and calling prospects. You’ve got to be honest with yourself here to make the most of this exercise.
Now compare sheet one to sheet two. Look at the difference in “business building activities” versus “cash register-ringers”. Sheet one is you being busy. Sheet two is you being productive. And there’s a difference between being busy and being productive.
I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for the activities you wrote down on the first sheet. But they’re all for nothing if the activities on the second sheet aren’t your biggest priority. Those are what is going to change your life. When I was still at my job at Midas, I would call people on my lunch break and went straight for the kill. Forget about the websites or autoresponders – my mindset was “just give me someone to talk to.” Starting in week 1, the only thing I did in terms of activities was to have 5 quality conversations per day.
That’s where the rubber meets the road, people. Those prospect calls are what drives business. It’s not about the technology, the landing page, the writing, the autoresponders, the funnel, or anything else but BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS. You want a better life? Get on the phone and build relationships.
If you are using the Sales Assistance Option to help you with this, that’s great, but it doesn’t absolve you of your chance to drive your own business growth. It doesn’t matter how good or bad you sound – sales makes money. Period. I made my first million before I even knew what an autoresponder was. I had stacks of papers on my floor that were the information I found for leads. I treated them like gold. And they became gold to me.
Building relationships makes you money. Look at your DMO – how much time did you spend doing that? Now look at how much money you made. It’s directly correlated. If you have a phone number for a lead, call it. If you don’t, get one any way you can. There are 30 million people looking on Google to start a business every month. And every one of them needs you!
Look at your past week. How many quality conversations did you have?
This may be tough to do. It may not feel good. But this isn’t about our feelings. If I did what I feel like doing every day, I’d go hide in a coffee shop and screw around on Facebook. We don’t get to do what we feel like doing if we want to be successful. Do we eliminate the things that are holding us back and self-sabotaging us, or not?
Get on the phone with people, and recognize that you’ve got what they are looking for. Ask them: “What’s your problem, and how can I help you solve it?” No BS – share yourself, find out what they need and how you can help, and watch people line up to follow you.
You have to be ruthless with your time. If any distractions get in your way, you have to be ruthless with them, too. Know what needs prioritizing. Do your relationship building first. Everything else comes second.
