WORK
Efficiency
It is easy to slip into the habit of working very hard, all the
hours that you are paid for and then a lot more on top, and yet not
seem to be getting anywhere. A salesman may be full of confidence, may
be determined to be the best, may call on potential customers time and
time again and yet not find his name at the top of the sales list. Why
not? Well it is not just the time we put in, but the effectiveness of
that time that counts. Perhaps he is spending too much time on follow
up calls that do not end in a sale? Perhaps he is getting so tired
that by the end of the day his mind is too fogged to present properly?
Perhaps he has not put any time into thinking about the selling point
of the product which will appeal to the next customer? You might think
that either he or his company would find a way of helping him. But he,
after all, would feel a loss of face in asking for help. And the
company feels it has got on pretty well by pulling the usual strings,
so why change?
And yet I have found that a calm look at things, together with
asking the right sort of questions, will often make the solution to
his problem leap out and hit him in the face. The answer is there, but
it just needs some patience to find it.
That is true not only for our salesman friend, but for people in all
manner of work situations in which an hour spent taking a full and
honest overview of things will often throw up one or two very
straightforward ways to improve. In theory the system of appraisals
that are getting increasingly common in some parts of the economy
should help – but they tend, from their nature, to encourage you
to put a nice lick of paint over the cracks rather than to actually
fill them.
