Organizing and Sales Magic

Happy 2010 and hoping you are a having a great start to your new decade! I am sure you did your annual planning and organizing for 2010, so you also see the beginnings of a great 2010. It is going to be a great year so if you are not anticipating a great 2010, I hope this tale shifts your perspective a bit.

The power of organizing and goal setting, we have always heard, is a great way to start the year. Out with the Old and in with New so to speak, and I have always gone along with it, more often than not, on autopilot. Well, this year my planning and organizing has been a bit different…so far. I have spent the last 15 days organizing, with some planning thrown in, for 2010 and have been experiencing some really interesting things. And while I wouldn’t recommend taking 15 days to plan and organize (I am a remedial planner & organizer with several years of disorganization to organize), it has been and can be quite a cathartic experience and have a positive impact on your Sales. In my particular case I closed 3 pieces of business because of my organizing!

OK you might saying to yourself, come on isn’t that a bit of reach, attributing the closing of deals to getting rid of stuff and planning. Well, yes it might be if that was the only thing I was attributing to closing the business. I just found it really interesting that as I organized, got rid of, burned, gave away and just released “stuff” my phone rang and these 3 deals that had been languishing in my funnel, closed. All this happened without much effort on my part, or at least it didn’t seem that hard.

So an interesting theory is emerging and one that I hope you will help me test. The more organized I become the easier it is to sell! Maybe a bit simplistic as theories go but why not give it a try and organize a few things in your life and let’s see what happens. Couple of suggestions to start with:

1) Paper Files – Go into your files (or in my case piles) and clean out stuff that you no longer need or that is so far out of date it isn’t relevant anymore. And/or move some of the paper files and notes into digital format so that you can keep them…until they are irrelevant…next year.

2) Electronic Files – Organize your Hard Drive(s) creating folders trying to keep ‘like with like’, so that you can find that proposal template you liked or contract you need to grab on the fly, next week.

3) Attack a Closet – Even if this closet has nothing to do with your business. I attacked (organized & added shelves) our kitchen pantry and it is amazing just the little bit of organizational sanity that gave me, not to mention messing with my wife’s head, as she didn’t think I knew where the pantry was let alone what was in it. (and it was while doing this ‘pantry’ work that I received calls closing 2 of my 3 deals..I am just saying!)

4) Business Cards – Clean out all your business cards, either get rid of them or add them to your contact database (Salesforce.com is a great tool for this). I took over 800 business cards I had collected at various networking and business events, and put them into my newsletter database. I anticipate that probably only 200 or so are still accurate or relevant but my first emailing will allow me to see who I to keep and who I need to delete from my database. This serves two purposes one I have a clean desk and second I am not constantly thinking “I should call that guy/gal” when I see their card sprawled across my desk. Minimized distractions allows for better focus.

Well that is a start anyway. I found that when I did these 4 organizational tasks things started to flow or at least they seemed to flow a little bit easier. So please help me test this organizing theory. Try one or all four of these suggestions and let me know what happens for you in your selling. Perhaps you will close that big deal that has been languishing or maybe your significant other will smile at you a bit more or perhaps you will just feel a little liter after getting rid of stuff. Whatever the result please do let me know.

Now I am off to attack another closet, perhaps my office closet this time, I am confident this will get the phone ringing.

Happy Selling and here’s to a Kick Ass 2010!