Law of the hourglass
November 08, 2011
-Karthik Gurumurthy
All of us need to be sensitive about this. It is called Law of the Hour glass.
People read about time management and talk about time management. But is that all worth it? Reading alone is not just worth it, but keeping an eye on the time and having a sense of urgency is vital. I read Todd Duncan's book (High Trust Selling) and he gives a great example which illustrates the whole point.
Take the example of a close football game. If the losing team has the ball they typically use a "two-minute" offense to help them run as many plays as possible with the remaining time. Their objective is to call the best possible plays before time runs out. If in the end they lose, you might hear, "They didn't lose the game, they just ran out of time." That might make for good consolation but the bottom line is they lost the game!
Likewise, you must manage your moves during the day so that you make more revenue. Create ways to help you make your best moves before time runs out. How can I prospect more, set more appointments, make time to study and prepare better, learn to overcome objections easier, build a better referral network or learn to go deeper with clients and referral partners?
If you don't know what's important you will make the wrong moves. Event management do the things that have the greatest ROI. You need to learn how to get first things done first. You must prioritize your events. It is important that you understand that the most important things generally require the greatest skill, the greatest motivation and have the greatest risk but these activities also provide the greatest return.
Todd believes strongly that you need to know what your hourly rate is and that you need to doing work that is commensurate with your hourly rate at least 75% of every day. You are just keeping busy if the work you are doing could be done by someone else for less than your hourly rate. You are productive when your time is spent on doing things that command your greatest talent and provide the largest return. Are you managing your business or is your business managing you?
Consider this, If you want to take your earnings from $30,000 to $60,000 you need to start doing $60,000 things while you are earning $30,000. As Todd says, "If you don't do something differently, you'll be then where you are now only later."