Now, let me share some strategies I believe will guarantee your success for next year and beyond. First, I want to make sure you compose three lists that are available to you each day. These lists include a Daily Must-Call list, a Daily Must-Do list, and a Client Upgrade List.
#1: A Daily Must-Call List. This list is for those clients and prospects you will commit to calling each day. Depending upon where you are in your practice, this number will range from 5 to 25 calls every business day. You don’t want to come into your office trying to figure out who you want to speak to that day, on the spur of the moment. Prepare your daily must-call list the night before. Doing so will help establish a consistency in your business throughout the year.
#2: A Daily Must-Do List. Before you do that, though, let me explain the difference between a must-do list and a to-do list. Most of you have, as I used to, a to-do list. A to-do list includes all those wonderful things that that you want to get done and can contain anywhere from 50 to 300 items. The to-do list I used to have had at least 75 items on it every week, and every day that went by without getting things on the list done drove me nuts.
One morning I started thinking about my to-do list in a new way. Certainly, there were a lot of things on my list, but I asked myself how many of those items were absolute musts, things I had to accomplish that day for the results I wanted.
My solution was to come up with two lists. I now have a project list, which for a lot of you is probably that to-do list, but I also have a very streamlined list I call my must-do list—a list limited to only six items. Okay, if you have a list let’s go through it and I’ll show you how to prioritize. Many advisors, when they prioritize, simply go a, b, c or 1, 2, 3, which doesn’t always serve them well. So, we’ll do something a little different. Take a look at your list. It’s probably a combination of larger projects surrounded by a lot of little things. Here is the question I want you to ask your self. What is the one thing on the list you can do right now, the one thing you can complete which will give you the biggest result in your business?
For some of you, the answer might be as easy as writing a letter, returning a phone call or doing a proposal. For others it might be calling that referral you got three weeks ago that’s been waiting for your attention. Whatever item on your list you can do right now that’s going to have the greatest impact on your business is the item on your list I want you to circle.
Now, go down your list again to find the one thing left on it that, if you were to do it today, would give you the biggest result in your business. Circle that and make that item number two, then repeat the process until you have a total of six items.
What you have just created is your must-do list. These are items that, if you could accomplish them today, you would feel so good about it, and that is the goal we are trying to achieve.
If you get lucky and get the six items done early, hey, go for the gold and pick a seventh task to complete, but don’t fall into the trap of just making lists of things to do.
The truth is we never get them all done anyway. One of the biggest lies in this industry is that, if you write a list of things to do—and I used to be guilty of this, too—you’ll accomplish a lot. What really happens with that scenario is that you just wind up with a huge list that bogs you down. You don’t want that to happen, so make the commitment now to create a must-do list of six items.
More on #3 – the Client Upgrade List in the next issue.________________________________________________________________________
