Eating my own dog food

By Scott Sambucci | October 8, 2013

I failed.

I teach clients to set daily goals when I’m teaching clients how to manage their selling days. Yesterday, I set a goal to call ten (10) contacts for a customer development and sales project we’ve undertaken for a new client.

Yesterday’s score:

• 10 planned calls
• 8 outbound calls
• 2 conversations
• 1 call back
• 3 emails for me to send today as follow up

The gory details:

• Left three (3) voicemails, and have yet to send the emails I promised to send to the recipient as a means to find a time to talk with them.
• One of the VMs returned my call, and left a VM because I wasn’t available. I know this will lead to a call by week’s end.
• Spoke to two people briefly (under 10 minutes). One was a cool introduction from a close contact I spoke with last week. It took him a few minutes to warm up. He started off the call telling me – “This isn’t a good time.” Then we ended up talking for nine minutes, and an agreement to schedule a longer call in the week. The second was earnestly happy to hear from me. It also wasn’t the best time for him, and we agreed to a specific time to talk later in the week. I sent him a note on LinkedIn (he was already a connection) to confirm that I sent the meeting invite to the correct email address. He accepted the meeting invite a couple hours later.
• Had one “No Answer.” This was a top executive in his field, and I called after business hours local time (purposely to avoid a gatekeeper) but turns out no one was around. From the rings and delays in the rings, it seemed like the call was getting auto-forwarded a couple of times – perhaps from his direct office line to his assistant’s line to a main line operator. No answer means I call back today at a different time.
• Sent one email confirming a meeting today. This is a call arranged last week with a close contact. I emailed to confirm the time. He replied with “Roger that.”

Why didn’t I reach my target of 10 calls?

• I started too late in the day. It wasn’t until 2pm that I could sit and focus on these calls because of other issues I let take precedence.
• I didn’t plan properly for a few administrative items related to my company that took longer than they needed to.
• I didn’t have a specific call list prepared. I’m in the early stages of the customer development work, so the good news is that I can scan through LinkedIn and various contact platforms I’ve accumulated over the years to find people quickly. But regardless… without a call plan, I had to type out what I planned to say to each person, which took time for each of the eight (8) calls I made. Probably 30 minutes in total that I could have used to knock out the two more calls I didn’t reach.

Today is spent with the same client onsite, with two calls scheduled and big block of time in between. Targeting 12 calls today – 10 new plus the two I failed to reach yesterday. Got to get back on par.

Weekly goal is ten (10) set appointments. I’ve already got three set.