4 min read
Energy thieves can drain you of the strength needed to manage your team to the top. Here’s how to identify and avoid these gremlins so you can work more efficiently
You’re unfocused, stressed and lack motivation. Why can’t you concentrate? It’s all work, work, work but with little hope of knocking off your sales targets. Sound familiar? If so, it’s possible that certain “thieves” are robbing you of your energy.
Provided that we have slept and eaten well beforehand, the morning is usually the time we have the most energy. However, as the day starts to drag on we find ourselves starting to slump a little, perhaps less productive in our daily tasks. When I say “energy thieves”, I’m referring to any stimulus, be it person, habit or thing that absorbs your vitality, drains you of your motivation and lowers your morale. In short, any obstacle between you and your sales goals.
Avoid them and you will be able to focus all your strength on selling, leading your sales team out of its afternoon slump.
The following list will help you to identify these thieves, so take note!
Relationships, habits and bad practices that undermine your productivity.
Let’s first look to some of the “usual suspects.” Pinpoint these vitality usurpers in your daily routine and you’ll remove them from the equation once and for all.
#1. Working from memory
It could be an email from a provider, the date and time of an appointment, the cost of a client in your company…it doesn’t matter; all this information takes up space in your mind and what’s more, having to retrieve it uses up energy!
So working from memory is a big mistake. You need the support of tools and databases, such as your mobile CRM that automate these processes for you, allowing you to focus on other tasks at hand.
#2. Disorganization
A clean space delivers a clear mind. Having all your office equipment disorganized means you not only waste time, but energy too. Having to search for a stapler, pen or Post-its will only disrupt your concentration.
The same logic can also be applied to your digital space. Disorganization among your folders and documents on your desktop or a poor management of information in your applications all have the same effect.
Just by taking a few minutes to organize your workspace, whether physical or digital, will optimize your productivity.
#3. Being too much of a perfectionist
Not everything has to be perfect. You must make sure you distribute your time effectively over all your daily tasks.
Perfectionists often waste a lot of time on the superfluous details, leaving little time for anything else. Yes, it might be nice to spend a couple of hours cropping and uploading headshots to all the leads in your sales funnel, but is it a deal closing exercise? Probably not…
To yield better results and make your time more efficient, highlight the core tasks first, get them done and then if time permits you can go back and brush up on the finer details.
#4. Not delegating
Avoiding delegation is something very common among freelancers, new entrepreneurs and… you guessed it, perfectionists!
Raimon Samsó describes it perfectly in his e-Book “Delegación radical” (Radical Delegation):
“…They think they have to do everything themselves. And by everything, I mean everything, from marketing, to sales, customer service, accounting, mopping the floor, checking out, going to the bank, paying taxes… everything. But it’s obvious that no one can do everything alone”.
Are you the type of person who thinks no one does the job better than you? That if you don’t take charge yourself nothing will come out right. Then it’s time to change your tune.
Delegating is very important, and shows you have confidence in your sales team. Otherwise you will end up stressed, overworked and run down.
#5. Spending time with emotional vampires
They may not have sharp fangs, but you still shouldn’t spend your time with them. Negative people like this will bleed you dry of your vitality.
They’re insecure, aggressive, egocentric and complacent and have bad aura hanging over them. The pessimistic type that can’t let a lost deal go, burying those around them in self-pity.
Others are immature and incapable of making decisions for themselves. They often require large doses of attention.
Remember you’re not going to close every lead that pops out the end of the pipeline. If you’re that person (or have a team member that is) please, teach them of their errant ways!
#6. Compulsively checking email or social media
Perhaps you’re waiting for an email from a client. It doesn’t matter. The majority of emails don’t need an immediate response.
If your work allows you a certain freedom to organize your time, don’t waste it on social media!
A recent study showed that on average employees will check their email 36 times an hour. It takes time to return to your previous state of concentration through every one of these disruptions. However, you can avoid wasting so much energy. Schedule breaks into your agenda to consult your email and social channels.
#7. Procrastination
Yes, you already know this one, repeatedly putting something off and telling yourself you will do it later. The end result? You end up doing nothing.
Procrastination is the hidden fear of facing a task, because it’s complex and makes us anxious.
The problem with procrastination is that other tasks start to accumulate, it increases stress and performance ultimately plummets.
So, don’t procrastinate any longer. If, for example, you have a meeting with a client you’re not fond of, don’t postpone it (even if they’re an emotional vampire).
#8. Sedentary lifestyle
A sedentary lifestyle is another energy thief, and probably one of the most difficult to identify because, little by little, it feeds on your strength.
Have an hour or two for lunch? Why not try a spin class or maybe a quick trip to the pool? Even with a small increase in exercise you will notice an immediate change. Your strength will increase and you’ll start to concentrate better at work.
#9. Working with too many applications
There’s no doubt about it, we work with many applications. (ERP, CRM, task managers, calendars and accounting software…).
WorkMeter indicated in one of their annual studies that the average time an employee can stay focused on each of these applications is around 81 seconds. Such a small lapse of time implies that we constantly feel obliged to interrupt our concentration by having small breaks or pauses that, in total, make up roughly 60 minutes of our day.
With so many interruptions in our day, it’s no wonder you feel mentally drained by the end of it.
To avoid this feeling, work with software that integrates as many functions as possible, so you don’t have to be constantly switching between applications.
We have spoken about people and bad habits that rob you of your energy. However, thieves also come in the form of inefficient work methods or poor knowledge of technology.
At ForceManager we really take these kind of problems into account and do our part to find solutions, making CRM easy to use. For example our application provides: intelligent management of business and client data; organization with documents saved into the cloud; a calendar for scheduling and delegating tasks to your team; email integration; lastly, implementation of a large number of functions to make sure sales teams are provided with everything they need without having to divide their attention between various applications.
After all, what it comes down to is technology that works for you, not against!
Now that you can suss out and avoid these thieving culprits, rise above them and change the habits that affect your efficiency at work!
