When you have a meeting, or you send an email, or perhaps you are having a telephone conversation it is helpful if there is a clearly defined purpose.
It is really easy to fall into the trap of re-running the same management meeting every week. Those meetings spend too much time looking at what happened last week and very little about what is going to happen / what will be different this week.
It’s easy to send an email that can best be summarised as “for information only – no action required.” You have spent time creating and crafting it, then the recipient has to take time to read it – and will probably respond, so that you know they have read it, and you have to read their response.
It is easy to pick up the phone and have a nice conversation with a prospect, but all too easy to finish the call without moving the prospect closer to becoming a client. Yes, you have to build a relationship, but that doesn’t mean that each and every conversation should not have a purpose above and beyond building the relationship.
With your regular meetings, make sure that you have a 30/70 split so that at least 70% of the meeting is spent focused on the things you can change, not the history you cannot change.
Before you send that email, think about what you want the recipient to do, what action you want them to take. If there is no action required, is the email necessary?
Find a reason to call, something that adds value to your prospect. They will welcome it and you build a stronger relationship. Have a plan for when your prospect falls of the prospect list or converts to a client. You can spend a lot of time talking to people who will never become clients or customers.
Act with purpose – you will get a whole lot more done!