Information is great.
I’m all for it, but sometimes it is simply too much.
Take the “daily numbers” — you know, the report that arrives in your email each morning or appears on the database that loads onto your computer the moment you turn it on.
Do the numbers really tell you anything? No, they don’t. So quit looking at them!
Yes, my comment is harsh, but what’s the sense in looking at them if you’re not going to do anything about them? Sure you’re excited to look at them to see if a sale you made is being recorded properly and yes, it’s easy to get bummed when you see numbers you don’t like, but that’s the problem.
The only thing you’re doing is looking at them, so stop wasting your time looking at them.
If you’re going to look at your numbers, then ask yourself what you’re going to do about what they’re revealing. Ask yourself what happened at a particular customer or what you did or did not do at an account.
Just looking at the numbers is simply not good enough.
By the way, if you think it’s easy for me to not look at the numbers, you’re wrong. I love looking at the numbers! In fact, in my business, we have metrics for just about everything we do and that’s the point. We use the reports to actually help us examine the business.
Recently in looking at some of our numbers, I discovered an opportunity with a particular process we had been doing in one particular manner. By breaking apart and trending the numbers, it became very easy to spot this new opportunity.
Let me challenge you.
If all you’re going to do is look at the numbers, then stop doing it.
If, on the other hand, you’re going to analyze them and look for things you can leverage, then do it. Just ask yourself this question: How many times a week do I need to do that?
Almost without a doubt, I will say you don’t need to do it more than once or maybe twice a week. The beauty is the time you’ve been spending every morning looking at the numbers can now be used on other more constructive activities. This in itself will give you the extra time you need once or twice a week to do a deeper dive into what the numbers are saying.
Copyright 2011, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
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