The hardest thing to recapture in life is lost time. It’s virtually impossible. When it comes to guarding this precious gift, beware of public enemies one and two: LAZINESS and PROCRASTINATION. Yes, you know procrastination. That’s the one where you keep postponing and putting off decisions. Your progress is always in “delay” mode. Don’t let those two thieves, laziness and procrastination, anywhere near your life.
I can tell you that, like me, most of the salespeople had routines they followed the minute they arrived at the dealership for work. That’s where the similarity ended. Although some of them did work hard, many of them would come in, hang up their coats, and then head for the
“dope ring.” They’d go get coffee, talk about last night’s game, and joke around with the other salespeople.
One guy in particular spent almost an hour practically every morning babbling on and on about the Detroit Red Wings’ game the previous night. Ice hockey’s a big deal in Detroit, so George never seemed to have problems getting an audience. By the time he was done (I could hear them all chatting on their way back to their offices), I usually had already closed my first sale and had at least a couple of hot prospect appointments lined up for the afternoon. I remember the wall behind George’s desk. It had a colorful poster of the Red Wings National Hockey League team photo. I always thought it was odd that a guy who was surrounded by one of most successful NHL franchises all day long would have so much difficulty closing sales. Sadly, George never made the connection. He was gone before the end of the hockey season.
For many of these guys, this was the kind of routine they followed practically every day.
Before you knew it, they’d shot half the morning. Nobody in that group was organized or had a plan to do a damn thing except fail. And most of them did.
When I talk about organizing, I’m talking about organizing for success. When it comes to the office, there is only so much time in the day. You’ve heard that “time is money.” In my game plan, TIME IS KING. It is PRIORITY ONE. I understood time management better than anyone else. I was organized. I had a plan. And nothing—nothing—got in the way of my working that plan every day I was there! I was in control. In my plan, time was my friend, not my enemy. I’ll go into more detail on time management in the next chapter. For now, remember that the effective use of time is critical to organizing a plan to achieve your goals.
One of the most common reasons people fail to accomplish what they’ve set out to do in a day is that they’re just not organized for success. Too much time is wasted trying to find things that are needed right at that moment and are nowhere in sight. They find themselves fumbling around for information.
As I said earlier, I rarely interfered with or made suggestions to other salesmen unless they asked for my help or advice on something. One time, though, I did happen to ask one of them how he could find things quickly. Whenever I passed by his office in the showroom, I was absolutely amazed at what I would see on his desk. It was a mixed bag of training manuals, data books, and invoices piled so high on either side of the salesman that it had to be a challenge just to be able to see his prospect, let alone find the paperwork he needed.
How could he survive in this jungle of clutter? His response was that when customers came into his office, he believed they would be so impressed with how much stuff he had around him that they would think he must be the busiest and most successful guy in the place—the man to deal with. That’s not the picture I would have had as a potential customer. What I saw was chaos. I just nodded my head and walked away.
THINK AHEAD! What are you going to need? Have it ready. Get rid of the piles of paperwork on your desk and transform them into efficient files that are readily available.
Remember, we’re talking about organizing time here.
If you looked at the desk in my office, it was always organized. I used an appointment book diary, or planner as some call it, to organize my entire day. I didn’t fill it out or plan things for the day when I arrived at work either. I never did that. That was all done the day before. Once in a while, I would have to rearrange some appointments on the spot. That stuff happens. Because I was so well organized, I was always able to deal with it and stay on top of things like that. The last thing I did before calling it a day was to organize the next day’s agenda. That’s how my day ended—planning tomorrow’s day. If I worked late at the dealership, since we were open in the evenings on certain days, then I did my pre-planning and organizing for the next day at home later that night. But I never came to work without having an organized plan for the day. This was a routine I developed very early on in my career.
My actions all had two things in common:
I did more of the things that paid me money:
prospecting
making appointments
staying in touch with existing customers by phone and direct mail and less of the things that didn’t:
spending time chasing endless paperwork (I had secretaries help do that)
chumming around with other salespeople (when I went out to lunch, it was with bankers and customers—people who could help me)
I did all my research ahead of time and cultivated work habits and routines that maximized my productivity and efficiency for the upcoming day:
I had prepared lists of all the prospects I was going to contact by name.
I had all my appointments locked and identified.
I had background information on everyone I would see at my fingertips (their jobs,
income, credit, family info, hobbies).
I was continuously improving my filing systems to make sure getting the information I needed was readily available when I needed it. I was never fumbling around trying to find things.
Like life, it wasn’t perfect, but it was damn close. I had a grip on time. I operated like a well-oiled machine. And my results proved I was doing it the right way.
Believe it or not, some of the people in the office actually wondered how I became so successful since we all were given the same car and truck catalogs, the same color and trim books, the same product facts books and data guides, the same product and training videos, and the same competitive comparison information and pricing. The truth was, I had no edge on them at all when it came to information. Yet they would wonder what inside track I had that enabled me to become so successful. They were spending far too much time trying to figure out ME instead of THEMSELVES.
I just laughed to myself and shook my head whenever I heard that kind of stuff. For many of them, training was a complete waste of time. We had no training videos on how to overcome laziness. All they really needed was a giant mirror so they could see how they operated all day long, wasting precious time. That picture alone would have been worth several training sessions. The funny thing about all this is that I wasn’t hiding some secret method or approach. I just followed the same basic common sense ideas that formed the foundation for the things that are right here in my book—My 13 Rules. Pure and simple—
that’s exactly what I did. Yes, I was persistent in my desire to succeed, but I was also well organized. I made sure that my enthusiasm to succeed wasn’t cheated by not having a solid organized plan of action every day I came to work. I wanted every hour of my time to count for something.
I didn’t think I was a genius or a specially gifted organizer for doing this. It just made perfect sense to me. In fact, most of us are not organized by nature. As I said in the introduction of this book, “If I can do it, anyone can.” Organization is a learned skill that we all develop in life as we mature. How well we organize is usually matched to the priorities and goals we set for ourselves. If they’re important enough to us, we’ll definitely find the time and a way to organize to get them done. Call it “forced” organizing if you like, but it will happen.
It’s a helluva lot easier, though, if you don’t wait for a crisis to realize you should have had an organized plan to deal with life. What kind of crisis are we talking about here?
If your boss suddenly came into your office without warning and said this was going to be your last day of work, where would you go and what would you do? How would you deal with your finances and responsibilities in the meantime?
What’s your plan as a parent for making sure your kids have the opportunity to pursue a higher education, assuming they aren’t going to get an academic or athletic scholarship? How does that get paid? What advice will you give your child?
What would you do if a member of your family got seriously ill and needed expensive medical treatment your health plan wouldn’t cover completely? What’s your plan for that circumstance?
Okay, I agree, these are tough examples. Unfortunately, they are real-world examples.
This is what actually happens in life. One (or all) of these three things is likely to happen to each of us at some time or another. I know firsthand. Take this opportunity to add your very own examples (and how you’d respond).
Organizing a plan forces you to look ahead—to plan for and anticipate the unexpected.
With the turnover as high as it is in several retail sales businesses (not just the auto industry), there must be tens of thousands of people experiencing life’s shortcomings every day. How do they cope without having some kind of organized plan for the rainy days in their lives? With an organized plan, you will not be spending endless amounts of time spinning your wheels and panicking over your next step.
IMPORTANT: Even though having an organized plan doesn’t solve your problems, it does give you the tools and the best shot at knowing how to deal with them effectively. And that’s the critical first step many never take. They jump into the deep end of the pool without even having a clue on how to swim.
Sometimes there are more pressing things that will get your attention in a hurry and will decide how you’ll prioritize your time for you. Let me give you a couple of examples.
If your doctor calls and says he wants you to come in to discuss some test results that aren’t quite right, you won’t forget to make that appointment!
If a guy is out on parole and has to check in with his probation officer every Friday at 11 a.m., you’ll be amazed at how well organized he can become to make that appointment when motivated with the threat of returning to jail. regrets. DON’T BE THAT PERSON. Be the one who says, “I’m thankful I had the opportunity to change my life for the better. Even with all of life’s shortcomings, I wouldn’t change a single thing about how I did it.” Thankfully, that is what I tell myself every day. Once I was organized for success, I never looked back.
I think the most gratifying feeling I get today is when I hear from someone either by mail or in person whose life has been changed after reading one of my books or attending one of my seminars. I remember vividly when I closed a motivational presentation at Oral Roberts University. I asked anyone who wanted to be “number one” to come up and join me on the stage. Several came up, but one young man in particular charged up to the stage with his hands raised and proclaimed to his classmates “I’m number one!” The applause was deafening. I promptly pinned a gold “number one” pin on his shirt.
After being blessed with a very successful career, whenever I sense positive vibes from the letters I receive or the gleam I see in a person’s face, being able to pass along some inspiration to help make someone a better person is priceless. For me, it doesn’t get any better than that.