What Happens When You Don’t Have a List To Start Your Day

CATEGORY: Cold Calling, Preparation, Time Management

What happens when you don’t gave a sales prospecting list ready to go before you start your day? Well, nothing good.

Let’s imagine you have to buy food and items at the grocery store for your house but you don’t have a list of items to buy and you haven’t put any real thought into it. What could happen? You could spend far too much time at the grocery store right?

Now imagine you have a grocery list of items you need before walking into the store. Are you going to get your items in a faster time than if you didn’t have a list ready? Of course you are!

The same thing happens in sales without a list. You end up spending your time doing the wrong things during the day and not making the kind of money you want. My time management tip for you today is simple but very often overlooked in sales. It’s to have a list prepared in advance before you walk into your office every day.

I discussed this at length in a previous blog post (How I Prepare for a Great Sales Week!) but here is a small section. If you want to have an effective day in sales, you must be doing one of four things:

Prospecting
Client Meetings
Presenting Proposals (not working on them)
Implementations

No matter how the day is scheduled, you must fill up any free time with Prospecting. That’s how to win the time management game.

So how does a list play a part? I will show you by sharing what 4 things that happen when you don’t have a good list for the day.

#1 You don’t get anything worthwhile done

Do you know the feeling you get when you accomplished something for the day? You are crossing things off of your to-do list? That builds momentum, and confidence. When you fail to have a list ready for the day, you end up spending the day wasting time doing things that don’t give you any satisfaction and could flat out be draining for your time.

At the very least, you should be spending it creating a list but I will only give you PASS to do that ONE time. You should never spend the golden hours of a work day preparing your list.

#2 You don’t prospect

Yeah, Derek. That’s obvious. Well not exactly. Because you could still FEEL as if you are spending the day prospecting but, in reality, you most likely are completing a fraction of the amount of activities you should be doing.

Don’t fool yourself.

Success comes from doing the right activities AND that means the right AMOUNT of them as well. There are worse things that happen as a result of limiting your activities per day…

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#3 You don’t set up future business

There’s an unspoken rule in sales that what you prospect on today, you will end up closing in 90 days. That means that if you aren’t doing any real prospecting today, you will feel it in your pocketbook 3 months from now. You see the effects of your prospecting after 90 days.

That could really impact your life in the near future and it could be solved by having a call list to stay organized and to work off of every single work day. When you have a rough month, because of a lack of prospecting 90 days ago, things can go to dark places…

#4 You open yourself up to negative thinking

When things are tough in sales, and often they are, your mindset can control the outcome of your career. Without prospects, there’s no money coming into the bank and you will start looking elsewhere on how to pay the bills.

You will also question your own sales ability, skills, and if you even want to keep doing this in the future. This is a difficult place to come out of because you will start believing what you say about yourself and once your thoughts get solidified into a belief, good luck on changing that.

No matter the reason above, having a list prepared before your sales day changes everything.

Summary of What Happens When You Don't Have a List To Start Your Day

Having a list ready to go before the day starts is essential for a successful day and career in sales. It brings clarity and energy to your day.

You become focused on contacting everyone on the list, enhancing your list in the future and driven to find prospects. When you get into a good rhythm of prospecting, it’s becomes a challenge that the paychecks keep you wanting to find that next prospect that will change your entire career.

If you don’t have a good list ready to go for next week, do yourself a favor and spend a few minutes over the weekend or before or after work and create one. Then you can just watch everything else fall into place.

Learn about how to put together a great list so you can spend the days setting more appointments and making more money inside of our Modern Sales Academy.