Are You Tracking Your Wins?

It’s easy to get distracted in the blizzard of activities that we have going on all around us every single day. But unless those activities include a significant number of wins, you’ll never achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself. And if you don’t pay attention to your wins, it’s easy to become discouraged. So, are you winning today? And if so, are you tracking those wins?

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David:                   Hi and welcome to the podcast! Today co-host Chris Templeton and I will be talking about your daily wins. Do you have any, do you know what they are, and are you tracking them? Welcome Chris.

Chris:                     Hi David. Thanks for doing this. This is a really, really important subject. It seems to me that every business owner or salesperson must accomplish wins on a regular basis or they wouldn’t be successful in what they do; but isn’t a win different for everybody? And why do you say it’s necessary to keep track of them?

David:                   Okay, well, two questions there. Is it different for everyone? The answer there is yes. Certainly, depending on your job, a win could be something different. If I’m in accounts receivable than a win for me is collecting money, right? If I’m in sales than a win for me could be getting in front of a new prospect, finding a new market that I want to target, fine tuning my message to engage more people, initiating a new client outreach. There are lots of different things that could count as wins for me depending on my position within the organization, but from the standpoint of getting customers – as a business owner or as a salesperson, as any sort of professional who needs customers – then it’s really about looking at those types of activities. Things like meeting a new prospect at a networking function, or reactivating a previous client who hasn’t bought from you in a while, or getting a new prospect to close for the first time. So there are very specific things that during the course of the day are probably happening and if they’re not, then you want to make sure that you start getting more of those types of things going on.

Chris:                     A big piece of this is really taking the time to recognize where you’re having successes because that really does fuel your performance as a salesperson, doesn’t it?

David:                   Yes. And when you take the time to do it and getting through the second part of your question, why is it necessary to track them? It allows you to realize what's going on. So very often on a day to day basis, we are just dealing with, you know, the whole whirlwind of events that's going on and it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we are moving forward in some areas and there are some days where we're not, let's be frank about it. There are some days where we're not, we're just putting out fires and we're not really moving the needle on anything. But when we take the time to track the wins and to recognize, okay, I want to get at least let's say three wins going today, what are three things that I could count as a win? Today, I can say I recorded a podcast that’s going out to lots of people. For me, that's a win, right? I had a chance to talk to Chris today. That's a win, right? It's two wins in one activity, but you can look at the different things that you're involved in and say, okay, what worked? I mean this morning I had several conversations with a couple of prospective clients, so that's two or three wins, right? Because I had those conversations. So you look at the activities you're engaged in and you say, okay, which of them count as wins? And which of them sort of just count as time-wasters or placeholders because it's a lot easier sometimes to track placeholders than it is to track wins.

Chris:                     Right. And I look at this and I think, well, how do I define what a win is as a sales-guy or as a business owner? I mean, you've talked about a couple, but do you sit down and think about, okay, these are the things? And I think the other thing that comes to mind is just the whole idea of having consistent wins. What defines it and how do you create consistency? Does that become one of the definitions of a win?

David:                   Well, if you're able to accomplish a few wins every day, that's your consistency component. If you have five wins today and then no wins for the next 10 days, that is not good consistency, that's not going to be good for your business. So I think recognizing and keeping track of the wins that happen on a day to day basis, that brings you the consistency component because it's very likely, as I said, that there are things that you are doing on a daily basis that are moving you forward. So getting back to the question about what defines a win; whenever you're taking a step that moves you forward in what you're looking to do, whenever you're engaged in positive actions that will allow you to know that you're creating the results that you want. That to me is a win. We had talked in a previous podcast about the difference between lag measures and lead measures. That's a concept that came from the book, The Four Disciplines of Execution. And so the idea of a lag measure is something that you measure at the end of the month. Our monthly sales were X. Okay? It's something that happened in the past. You can't really do anything to influence it. When you look at lead measures, these are the things that you're going to do to increase your sales by the end of the month. So the lead measures are the specific actions that you take. So you look at the things that you have to do on a daily basis to move your business forward, and you ask yourself, how many of those things did I do? And I'm going to jot that down as a win, I'm going to consider that a win for today. Can I get three wins out of the day? Can I get five wins out of the day? Can I get ten wins out of the day? I mean, if you get three to five, you're probably doing better than most people. And even if you're getting three to five in a day and you don't recognize it, if you don't track it, then you don't even realize the things that are causing you to be successful.

Chris:                     Right. You know, one of the things though that I think we need to help listeners with is kind of defining - what is a good win? So, for instance, if I say, well, I sent out a hundred emails today that’s probably not as strong of a win as scheduling an appointment with somebody to talk about your product, right? So how do you help people to kind of determine what wins they should be focusing on?

David:                   Well, it's going to depend on the emails you sent out. If I send out a hundred emails to targeted prospects who are interested in what I have to offer, and if thirty of them responded to it, then that's a big win. I mean, that can actually be several wins. I crafted an email that I wanted to send out to a hundred people. Maybe I did that on Monday. On Tuesday, I selected a list of the ideal people who should receive this message. That's a win for Tuesday. And then on Wednesday I sent out that ideal message to that ideal prospect and I used my marketing vehicle. Okay, we're doing MVPs of marketing again. So now that's my third win is that I actually got it out in front of people, and then hopefully as a result of taking those three positive actions, those three wins the next day, I've heard back from a bunch of those people. I've engaged some of them in conversation, I'm providing quotes for people and all of those things become wins as well. So I think it's important not to disregard things because you say, okay, one thing is more of a win than another. If it's a win, it's a win. And if you engage in two wins and one's a tremendous win and one's not as much of a win, they're both still wins. It's like, okay, if I'm playing baseball and I say, well, I'm only going to go for home runs, singles, doubles and triples, don't count. You're missing out.

Chris:                     I also kind of equate this to the sales funnel a little bit. Where you know you've got leads at the top and then somebody who's buying at the bottom; different things that you track are going to have greater impact than others, but sometimes the things that have the least impact are also the ones that begin to build the funnel, aren't they?

David:                   Yes, and one of the advantages of tracking your wins is that when good things start to happen, you'll look at it and you'll say, okay, what was it? What was the behavior that created that? Did I get this lead today because of those emails that I sent out last Wednesday? Did I get this as a result of an ad that I put up on Facebook and the person responded to that? There is some sort of previous win that probably resulted in this win, and the better you get at connecting the dots between those wins, the better off you're going to be able to replicate that and cause it to happen again in the future.

Chris:                     And so I also take it then from that standpoint that as I go through this process over time, I also recognize the wins that are getting the results that I want are also the things that I want to be doing more of and the ones that aren't, I can kind of push to the side. Right?

David:                   Absolutely. And when you're looking at your daily wins and you say, okay, how much time did that take? I've logged three daily wins for today and I look at the time that it took and I realize that it took a total of maybe 45 minutes out of an eight or 10 hour day. Then I can ask myself, okay, what was I doing the rest of the time? What was I doing with the rest of that day and are there other activities in there that I could count as wins? And if not, then how many of those activities could potentially be eliminated? Because if it's not a win or if it's not going to lead to a win, then why am I doing it?

Chris:                     Right. Exactly. Talk a little bit about how to track them. Is it a writing it down thing? Is it digitally, what should that be?

David:                   It should be whatever you'll actually do. I think that's the main criteria, if you're more comfortable writing stuff down, some people like to do it in a journal. I think that's a great idea. Some people with the handwriting, it's just, I don't know, more conducive to emotional writing. My handwriting is so bad, I just can't do that because if I write it down, I literally cannot read it the next day. It's embarrassing but true. So I have to do it digitally because if I don't, I'm not going to be able to reflect back on it. So whatever works for you, but if you're a digital person, do it digitally. If you like writing things down, write it down, but make sure that it's all in one place so that you can reflect back on it and you can flip back over a period of weeks and say, okay, what was I doing two weeks ago that seemed to be working better than whatever's going on now? And you can look at that and say, okay, well, two weeks ago I did this one thing that I'm not doing now. Maybe I need to do that again. So it's just great from the standpoint of not just documenting what you're doing, but also in terms of thinking and planning what you want to do going forward.

Chris:                     You know, my dad was in the life insurance business.  Tough, tough business, and he had one goal and it was not about sales. It was always about getting what he called two openers a day. Two opening appointments a day where he could go in and talk to somebody about what he did and how he could help them. And he was one of the top sales guys in his company. And from his standpoint, and it really fits here, is sometimes just the simplest things are the things that make the biggest difference. And they're so far out from the actual sale that we don't give them the credit that we should.

David:                   Yes. And when you've done a good job of identifying those lead measures. So for him it was about opening up two conversations a day. Right? So once that was done, he had a successful day. That was his win for the day, and he knew that simply by doing that he was going to be able to develop a successful business. So for each of us it might be something like that, it might be something different than that. But also recognizing that the more of those things we can figure out and build into our calendar, the more success we're going to have.

Chris:                     It is so true. And when I'm in a place where I'm focused and appreciating what I'm doing right, we can get into the negative side of things pretty easily. It really changes our whole perspective, doesn't it, David?

David:                   Absolutely.

Chris:                     Very cool! What else should we be talking about in regards to wins? What are we missing that a salesperson or a business person should know?

David:                   Well, you have to identify what your wins are, because again they're going to be different for everyone. So, take the time to look at - what are the things that you've done in the past that have worked well for you. What are a few things that you did today that you feel are going to be helpful for you going forward and just start a list. Compile a list of things that you consider to be wins for you in your business. You can also do this personally. What are a few things that you consider to be a win in your personal life? It could be something like, you know, spending a certain amount of time with your kids each day, if you're not doing that. You know, you decide what you get to put on your wins list, but by doing just that, identifying what those wins are and then putting it together and keeping track of it every day, you will be able to create much better results in your life, and your business.

Chris:                     It's pretty straight forward, but something that we have a tendency not to pay as much attention to as we should. Okay. Let's talk about the action steps that our listeners should take to incorporate daily wins into their life.

David:                   Okay, so first of all, decide what constitutes a win for you. Put together a list, a document.  So that every time you accomplish one you can put it on there, and whenever you come up with a new one, you can add it on there; and you can just keep track of what do I consider to be a win and how often am I engaged in those activities. Second thing, figure out how you're going to track them, whether you're going to do it analog or digital, paper or computer doesn't matter, but just be sure that you're tracking them every single day. And then the third thing, is you can share your wins with people who will support you with this stuff.  For example, members of our Total Market Domination course as well as the members of our Mastermind Group, our Discussion Group and our Inner Circle are able to share their wins and inspire others to win more and to share their wins.  Now there are going to be some people who aren't happy for you when you have wins, you don't want to share it with them. Right? You want to find the people who are actually going to be happy for you when you accomplish one of these wins.  People who will support you and encourage you, learn from you and you can learn from them.

Chris:                     It's so important. And I'll just add one more thing that my dad did, which I always thought was interesting, is if he got 10 openers by Thursday, he didn't have to make calls on Friday. So maybe a reward system is also part of the process, if that helps you to motivate yourself.

David:                   Yeah, sure. I mean anytime you can provide that some sort of incentive that will get yourself to take the actions you know you need to take, definitely worth looking into.

Chris:                     Absolutely. Okay. What is coming up on the next podcast?

David:                   Okay, Chris, on our next podcast we'll be talking about the three pillars to creating top of mind awareness. So people think of you first.

Chris:                     I like it. David Blaise topsecrets.com. Thank you so much. See you guys on the next podcast.

David:                   Thanks Chris.

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