Making the most of your time.

24th June 2010

A few years ago when I first started out as a business coach, my time keeping was awful, and it always meant that I was rushing everywhere, often being late for meetings, and seldom feeling in control. Consequently my sales meetings often ended without the result I needed, simply because I was not properly prepared, and I hadn’t planned how I wanted the meeting to go, nor what I expected the outcome to be.
The starting point to changing this was when someone pointed out that I didn’t need to be late, it was really just me trying to show that my time was more important than my potential customer. In other words it was laziness or rudeness, but in either case it was likely to put my prospect’s back up, and quite probably lose me the business.
Once I properly understood this, and apart from exceptional circumstances, I believe this to be absolutely true of all people. So I had to change the way I did things, and plan ahead so I would arrive early. The down side of this is that it can mean a lot of hanging around in lay-bys (for which I haven’t yet been arrested), but the upside means that I have time to prepare myself mentally, compose myself physically, and I then conduct my meeting with confidence and purpose.
Just one other thing. To make sure I don’t waste time, I always have business books in the car to further my learning, or I take a list of people to call, or perhaps I might now sit and write another blog.

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