I was always looking for ways to get and stay motivated so one day I decided to reverse engineer my prospecting numbers to determine exactly how much money I was making doing the activity I did the most, which was dial a phone.

I already had the data because I added up my numbers for the year. Dials, contacts, meetings held and my income. I was able to determine how much money a dial, a contact and a meeting were worth. I focused on how much money a dial was worth because without that dial there would be no contact or meeting.

I discovered I was making about $10 dollars per dial. I realized that every time I touched the phone, I was making money, my mindset changed about prospecting. I looked at my phone and it transformed itself before my eyes it began to look like a cash register.

I would make a call and get rejected and say to myself well there is $10 for the movies this weekend.  I would make another call and get rejected and say to myself well there is $10 for a twelver of Coors talls this weekend. Giddy Up!!!

I got into the art of painless prospecting. No matter what happened on the other end of the line every time I made a call, I was making $10. I was able to associate touching the phone with making money. What could be more motivating than that? I could not have gotten there without tracking and reverse engineering my numbers. It was a game changer for me.

Having worked with 90,000 sales people. I have learned that many salespeople resist tracking their activity. Here are a few reasons why.

  • They feel they are solely doing it for management
  • They are uncomfortable with CRM
  • They don’t see the benefit in doing it
  • They don’t want to see how little activity they are doing
  • It takes time to do

If you are in sales here are 10 reasons why you should track your activity.

One – The only thing in life you can control is yourself – Your attitude and your effort. Therefore, that is the only thing you should track.

Two – Your goal is to track your activity for yourself… not anyone else. You are in competition with your own potential. One way to see how you are doing is to track what you do.

Three – Tracking activity promotes more activity. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Activity typically generates more activity and like they say activity creates accounts.

Four – If you track your prospecting activities you will be living in reality instead of rationalizing your behavior. High achievers make the choice to live in reality, because that is the starting point to developing the right prospecting mindset.

Five – Tracking your activity every day will help you to develop good habits. Long after you can do anything about it, your habits will have created who you are.

Six – Use some type of system to track your activities. The three most common ways are: Excel, CRM a daily scorecard or a combination thereof. Use what works best for you and use it every day. The easiest way to track your prospecting activities is while you are doing them.

Seven – Tracking your activity will enable you to determine how much you have completed versus your goal. This will show you what you need to do to stay on pace at any given moment; Giving you real time feedback on your where you stand in relation to achieving your goals.

Eight – Understanding your conversion rates is very important in helping you to reverse engineer your prospecting activities. For example, if you were able to see how many prospects you had to ask for a meeting to achieve your weekly goals, you would know how many asks you needed to make on a daily basis. You can also do what I did which was to see how much money each prospecting attempt was worth.

Nine – Activity tracking will help you to get a true understanding of what is really happening in your prospecting activities. It will also let you know the precise activities that are driving opportunities into your pipeline.

Ten – At the end of each day, week and month, add up your numbers and analyze your efforts. Make adjustments if necessary. Those adjustments are the fastest way to improve your skills and maximize your time.

The bottom line is that “it does not matter how you track your activity it only matters that you track your activity”. You owe it to yourself to do so. Start today. The time is now!