No Secret Sauce: Building the Habit of More

Why Sales Leaders and Recruiters Fall Short (and How to Break the Cycle of Distraction)

There is no secret sauce. You just have to do more.

To put things very simply… being successful in sales and recruiting requires you to be in the habit of consistent activity. Activity creates opportunities. Activities like phone calls, texts, LinkedIn messaging, emails, hand-written notes, drop-bys, networking events, career fairs, asking for referrals, video messaging, lunch/coffee meetings, quality checks, social selling - the list goes on.

Here’s the reality: most of you reading this already know you should be doing more. The challenge is that distractions creep in, bad habits form, and leadership pressure to “hit the number” often collides with the day-to-day grind. The question isn’t whether you can do more - it’s whether you’ll get into the habit of doing what actually matters.

The Time-Suckers that Kill Your Habits

Let’s name the culprits that pull you away from real activity:

• Your inbox. We all know that this one thing can be the biggest distraction. The solution: walk away. You need protected time away from the distraction of emails so make sure that time is…well…protected.  Step away from your inbox for 1-2 hours. Don’t worry, the world will still be spinning when you return.

TIP: Put your out-of-office on during this time.

• Busy work. These tasks are neither urgent nor important and yet we spend so much time doing them. You feel you are being productive, but you are not! Avoid these tasks or do them once the higher priority tasks (e.g. the activity we are talking about in this blog) are complete.

TIP: If possible, let AI handle it.

• Over-preparing. Don’t get me wrong, preparation is a huge key to success, and we preach that big time at Butler Street but there is such a thing as over-preparing. I think we over-prepare when we are nervous or unsure of ourselves but remember “Progressive improvement is better than postponed perfection.” The act of doing is way better than thinking about doing something or in this case over-preparing.

TIP: Set a time limit and stick to it.

• Internal meetings. Some meetings are productive, but many are not. The folks at Google eliminated meetings to help boost productivity and efficiency. Look at your meetings.  Are they a good use of time? If not, cut them.

TIP: If the meeting is important, does it need to be 60 minutes or can it be 45 minutes?

• Honorable mention. Procrastination, chatter, social media… you know the drill.

Building the Habit of “Do More”

Here are three ways to reset, refocus, and turn doing more into a daily habit:

• The 15:4 Rule. Fifteen minutes of planning your day can save you on average four hours of time. You can plan early in the morning before your day starts or at the end of the day for the next day. Just make sure you do it. The time savings are tremendous.

• Eat the frog, then the cupcake. Got something on your to-do list that you are dreading doing? That’s your frog and I want you to do that thing first. If you wait, you will spend all day dreading doing that thing - so just get it over with. Struggling to find the motivation to be productive? Find the easiest task on your to-do list. That’s your cupcake. Do that right after the frog and now you have accomplished two things already! We like progress and progress leads to more progress. Progress!

• Set specific daily activity goals and reward when reached. CAUTION: A full-sized Snickers bar after each call is not a healthy reward. I also recommend that you front-load the first part of your week with higher activity goals. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday should have bigger activity goals than Thursday or Friday. It feels nice to be at 75% of your weekly activity goal by Wednesday instead of scrambling to hit those numbers Friday afternoon when your co-workers are all going out for happy hour.

The Leadership Lesson

Sales leaders: habits are contagious. If you want your team in the habit of high-value activity, model it yourself. Protect your own time, show discipline around distractions, and make “do more” the cultural norm—not just a motivational speech at Monday’s meeting.

Want more ideas? Ask ChatGPT or your AI tool of choice for creative ways to do more activity.

Want to do better activity? Reach out to Butler Street and learn about our Sales Effectiveness and Recruiting Effectiveness training programs.