Recently, I talked about Jan, my #1 new sales rep. She had a great sense of general direction, but as a new sales rep, she was clueless and had no idea what she was doing.

I remember the first day we rode together. She took me on a sales call, then drove across town for the second call, then to the next town over for the third sales call. By the time the third call was over, it was time for lunch. After lunch, she drove back to the first town. We went to a customer that was located right next door to the very first call of the day!

I asked her why we didn’t just go there in the morning because we were already there. She didn’t have a good answer. At the end of the day when we were talking about her sales presentations, we discovered that she spent 80% of her time promoting a product that only accounted for 15% of her bonus compensation.

Jan’s problem wasn’t with motivation or action. She had plenty of that… perhaps too much. She would get up in the morning and speed all over town all day long, but not really accomplish much.

Jan and I sat down and spent a lot of time establishing a routing schedule that made much more efficient use of her time and focused on customers that would yield the greatest impact. Just by adding a little focus to her daily activities, Jan was able to significantly increase her sales results without even becoming a better sales person.

So often success lies in the stuff that’s going on behind the scenes.

When you get up in the morning, do you have a plan?

Are you constantly evaluating your activities and linking them to your overall goes?