How and Where to Focus Your Energy

One of the challenges facing sellers on a daily basis is where to focus their energy. I would suggest that there are three types of situations that we all encounter. Situations over which we:

1. Have no control - the economy, interest rates, Moammar Khadafy, the weather, the competition, and corporate policy.

2. Have influence - whether or not prospects buy from us, my relationship with my boss, what my colleagues think of me, how responsive they are to me, and how much money I earn.

3. Have control - my sales activities, how well I prepare for meetings, the quality of my reports, my industry knowledge, how professional I am, the way I treat my colleagues, how hard I work, how I respond to situations, what I think, what I read and what I watch on TV.

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Obviously these are not exhaustive lists – they could be nearly infinite. The question is - how much emotional energy do we put behind each of these situations? There are a myriad of ways that we can react to any one of them. Let’s assume that there will be some level of engagement and the situation is not being completely ignored. With that in mind I have summarized our responsiveness to them in to three categories:

1. Informed - I take the time to understand and keep abreast of the situation. These are important issues that may impact me. They take some of my time and energy but are not my primary focus and I do not try to influence the outcome.

2. Engaged - I make a concerted effort to influence the outcome of the situation. I may be proactive in the way that I communicate and behave. I place effort on creating the outcome that I want.

3. Committed - I have made this a top priority in my personal or professional life. I have decided that this takes precedence over other things and I put significant effort towards achieving the outcome that I desire.

The challenge is to properly distinguish between the situations and apply the right amount of energy behind your level of engagement. Allow me to explain with a couple of examples.

A couple of weeks ago I was counseling a friend of mine, a sales rep for a small company, who had just learned that her salary was being cut back and that several of her colleagues had been terminated. The company owner had agreed to sell the company to a larger firm, but when they started the due diligence process and saw how poorly her company was performing they lowered their offer and the owner pulled the deal off the table. Faced with few choices the owner made some difficult decisions.

The focus of my friend’s angst centered on the actions of the owner, the decisions that he had made over the years, and her disdain for the way he had acted over the last few weeks. Of course she was also very upset about taking a significant pay cut. Now she has some important decisions to make. Stay with the company, redouble her efforts, and try to make the best of a bad situation? Take some time off? Get her resume updated and in circulation? I advised her to focus on the things that she could directly control and let the other things go. She can’t control what her boss thinks and does. She can’t change the fact that her colleagues were terminated. She can only affect what she thinks about all of this and what she does next.

Here’s another example of dealing with situations we can and cannot control, but this time I’ll plug in the situation types and involvement level to help illustration the point.

I rarely run late for the airport, usually giving myself plenty of time to get there. This time, however, I had to rely on multiple modes of transportation and if everything went just right I’d make the flight. Otherwise there was little room for error.

The first leg of my trip had me catching a train from downtown Chicago. On the way out of the station the train stopped to let a freight train pass by (No Control/Informed). Given the tight timeframe involved with catching the flight, I began to grow agitated. To calm my nerves I took out my iPhone and started working through some emails, ignoring the train’s speed and progress. Eventually the train got me to the station where I had parked my car that morning. From there I would drive to the airport and enjoy more control over the situation – how fast I drove, what route I chose, how aggressive to be on the road (Influence/Engaged). When I arrived at the airport I found that the daily parking lot was full (No Control/Informed) and I was forced to drive a little farther to the long-term parking garage. Once there, it was a challenge to find a parking place, but I eventually found one (Influence/Engaged). I rushed down to the ground floor to find a shuttle bus ready to be boarded. You can only imagine how slowly the bus traveled (No Control/Informed). So out came the iPhone again and I put the bus on “ignore”. Once at the airport, the security lines were surprisingly long so I moved lines a couple of times (Influence/Engaged) and finally got in one that was short and moving quickly. Unfortunately, in my haste, I didn’t take care of my laptop, so it had to go back through the x-ray machine (No Control/Informed). Although time was not on my side, I had just enough of it to make my flight.

On the train I turned to my iPhone to distract me. The same thing happened on the shuttle bus. Why pour energy in to things you have no control over? It’s a wasted use of a precious resource – your emotional energy. On the other hand, where I could influence the outcome, I made moves to influence the situation – changing security lines for example. The goal is to understand when you are in a position to influence the outcome of a given situation and apply your energy accordingly.

Here’s an “Emotional Energy Chart” to help clarify the concept.

		Amount of Control
		None	Influence	Total
Emotional Energy	Committed	If you are committed to things you cannot control, that energy is being siphoned from other important areas.		- Sales activities - Preparation - Industry knowledge - Professionalism - What I read and watch on TV.
	Engaged		- Reputation - Close ratio - Pipeline - Income
	Informed	- Economy/Interest Rates - Weather - Competitors - Geo politics - Boss		This is the “Excuse Zone” where you don’t hold yourself accountable for your actions.” I am a victim. I don’t have time. The organization has set me up to fail.”

Beware of the red zones, particularly the “Excuse Zone”. Here you have total control over your activities; however there is always a “reason” for not getting things done. The red zones are potential areas of danger. To keep a positive balance, you should be in the green zones.

What if you are fully committed to something you cannot control at all? It’s a top priority in your life, yet you have absolutely no influence on the outcome. That lost energy cannot be reclaimed. Let’s say that you are absolutely obsessed with the recent happenings in the Middle East. You read every article you can find, you watch all the YouTube videos, are glued to the news, and read books on the history of the region. You think about it at you work and it has become a real distraction. You engage in lively debate with anybody willing to participate - over email, Facebook, in the break room and on the phone. In other words, you are fully and emotionally invested in these events over which you have absolutely no control. (Let’s assume for the moment that you’re not from that part of the world, you don’t have relatives involved, so it’s not personal in that way.)

If this describes you, let me offer you an experiment to see how your emotional energy is being directed. Find a wall in your house that you’d like to knock down to make more room for something else. Maybe a larger kitchen or master bathroom. Now go push on that wall with both hands as hard as you can. Push on it for several minutes with everything you’ve got. What was the result? The wall hasn’t budged an inch and you’re exhausted. That’s what happens to your mind when you commit yourself emotionally to events over which you have no control. You become emotionally exhausted and the situation hasn’t changed.

What does this have to do with sales? Everything. I see challenges with sellers becoming involved in situations over which they have little or no control – or influence. Their energy is being directed at pushing the wall. That takes away from things over which they have full control and that could ultimately make them successful. Smart reps know how to correctly identify situations and manage their time and energy accordingly. Others allow distractions to become their main focus of energy and lose sight of the things over which they have full control. They enter the “Excuse Zone” where there are endless reasons for their failings. Successful reps fully commit to the things over which they have control, thereby significantly increasing their likelihood of success. Where is your energy being directed?

We all have choices over where to direct our energy and our efforts. As sales professionals there are endless distractions that keep us from doing the things that can make us successful – things over which we have control. My challenge to you is to identify those things over which you have limited or no control or influence and apply the appropriate amount of time and energy towards those. Then understand what you have control over and re-commit to those activities. Results will follow.

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