If you’re not at one with GTD, I suggest that you check it out forthwith. Sample these excerpts from David’s newest book, ‘Making it all Work’ as a free taster.

And if that’s whet your whistle, here is a video of David talking to the boffins at Google. It’s quite long, but very informative, and of great use to us Productive Sellers.

I’ve used GTD principles as part of my personal productivity system for years. Where the challenge comes is in adapting the framework of GTD to meet your individual needs and to work with the technology that you have available. I’ll post shortly with some free on-line resources to help you manage everything, but for now here is a technologically agnostic tutorial from GTD Times to get you started on GTD for salespeople.

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Don’t have that yet. Grab some paper and get going.  One goal per page with plenty of space underneath. Don’t forget, there are no wrong answers here. While The Productive Seller is all about sales (click here if you arrived at this post and want to know what it’s all about!), this exercise has a broad focus, so get it all in there. Want to quit sales and be a fighter pilot, write it down.

Remember, all goals are possible; it’s just a case of planning, directing your resources at the ones that matter and managing the process effectively (the productivity bit).

Let’s get started

1. Grab one of your goal sheets.  For our example, let’s say that I really do want to leave sales and become a fighter pilot (I don’t – apparently people shoot at you!).

2. Draw a line under the goal and start to write down all of the things that you will have to do for this to take place. (e.g. speak to air force recruiting office, plan budget for salary drop, overcome my fear of heights, etc).

3. Just keep going. Go mad. Need more paper to fit it all in…good. The more the merrier. Don’t worry about organising the list for now, just list like your life depended on it.

4. Finished. Excellent. Pop it in your tray/folder/dog (just checking you’re still concentrating!) and grab another one.  Repeat steps 1-4.  If you are starting to panic, read on first.

One of two things will start to happen to you

• Either you will start to feel enthused like never before about the incredible range of opportunities that your life has and feel overcome by the richness of existence

OR

• you will be overwhelmed by the complexity of your fulfilling your goals and become despondent. Don’t. We are going to make this very simple in our next post.

The Next Step

If you’re panicking, stop! It is all going to become very simple shortly. In the next post you will start to create a plan to take you from where you are now to having the life you dream of. In the meantime, have faith in yourself and keep scribbling.

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Let’s talk about goals for a moment. What are your goals for today, for this week, even for this year?

You probably have a loose idea of what you want to achieve in the short term. If you take the time to examine it, you’ll

find that most of it is reactionary; that is it is determined by what is going on right now – deals, meetings, sales targets, household chores – you get the picture.

That’s fine. These things have to be done. They represent what we are going to call the operational level of your life.

Now we know that, we are going to forget it…for now.

Above the operational level, we have the planning level. This is comprised of the operational things that need to be achieved, but they are not happening right now. For instance, you know that you are going to have to replace your car this year; the mileage is high and the maintenance costs are going to outweigh its value. You can’t afford to do it now, but you plan to do it this year.

Or let’s take a sales example, as this is a sales productivity blog. You know that your company has a new product coming out in quarter three. You know that, to get ahead of the game, you need to start learning about the market for that product, but you don’t have the time right now. You think that you will probably look at it closer to the time – if the opportunity arises!

They are still tasks that are dictated by the daily machinations of your life; they are just a bit further out. This is the planning level.

Then we come to the exciting stuff! What do you want to do with your life? Whoa, steady on there for a minute. That’s a big question. Do I even know that? My bet is that you do. You might not have your entire future mapped out, but I know that you have ambitions and dreams for at least some areas of your life. That seat on the board, or moving from the telesales team to major accounts, becoming team leader – anything.

And what about your life outside work, because to be a productive seller, we need to live our lives outside work just as effectively. Everything has a balance and if all you do is work, you will burn out.

This is the strategic level, and it’s where all of our work will start.

So, your task for the week is to take a few sheets of paper and a pencil and start to write out your long term objectives for your life. Don’t worry about when you are going to do what: one year, five years, twenty years; it doesn’t matter at this stage. Write each one at the top of a sheet of paper. That’s it. That is the basis of the strategic level and it’s where your journey into sales productivity will start.

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