verb \ˈshed·ding\
transitive verb
1. Dismissing elements that have no inherent value to your daily sales operations
Shedding can have a great impact on your sales time and day-to-day functions. Items in your inbox, on your computer’s hard drive, and in your paper files are acting like an anchor, keeping you from forward motion. It’s clutter which prevents you from being clear on the emails and documents needed to share. When you begin to eliminate unnecessary things, you can see what things more clearly connect to your ideal customer and this turns the anchor of clutter into a propeller to your success.
Consider these organizing and time management statistics:
- We never use 80% of papers and information that we keep
- Each week, the average American will spend one year searching through desk clutter looking for misplaced objects and 727 minutes waiting for dates and business associates to show up for meetings
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
Decide what you need to keep and what is best to let go of. Things that you have accumulated for years may have no inherent value in your life. Those blogs you want to review or emails you want to go back to, those various sheets of paper – all are taking up mental RAM.
Without a strategy to review or find, they are taking up space in your mind confusing you on where and what to focus on. The sooner you create a strategy for going through them or simply let go of them, you will find more room (literally and figuratively) for new sales opportunities.
There is an analogy that is referenced in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma. The master pours a cup of tea for his student but doesn’t stop pouring as the cup begins to fill. He continues to pour and the tea overflows the cup onto the saucer and then eventually onto the floor. The master highlights to the student that you can keep pouring to try and fill up, but when your cup is full, you can’t find room for anything new.
Each day, choose to make room in your email, computer, your phone’s memory, basically anywhere you can to make room for new sales opportunities. That way, you are allowing for room (literally and figuratively) for life to show you new opportunities. By shedding, you are letting go of the things that aren’t ideal so you can employ more time to make new opportunities instead of pouring all your hard work into overflowing a full cup.
It is typical to hold onto paperwork, emails, and folders “just in case.” However, this can limit your growth after a certain length of time. Success is stifled when you hold onto the old things acquired over time. This ends up causing more work because you need to sift through so many other things to find the thing you REALLY need to work on to drive more sales. Don’t forget about all the rabbit holes past emails and documents provide. How many folders do you have of things that you haven’t looked at in months, let alone years? How many times do you ever really use this information? How many old emails are you holding onto? What type of clutter is on your desk? If it is something you use on an ongoing basis, create a folder for it where commonly used items are found. Take the time to make room for the new.
Habit to Shedding
Create a strategy on how you will save the digital or physical items. Spend time cleaning up the digital or physical items you have accumulated. Focus on your ideal prospects and clients your agency thrives on.
You may have reached a tipping point because you can’t fit anything more in your phone or you may have physically experienced the limits of not being able to find any more space in your office. Spend an afternoon on a Friday getting rid of files accumulated over the years. You will discover 1 of 3=2 things:
- they are taking up space and there is no value in keeping them.
- the items buried in a folder or email can be used consistently as part of your sales process.
After you focus on deleting or using, you will find you feel more efficient and make progress in sales areas where you were previously stuck.
Start Shedding Soon
Spend time putting everything into 1 of 2 places: your trash bin (physical or digital) or a folder of sales items to use. Download the 5 Must Knows for Growing Your Agency Easier and as you are going through your files, you can learn how you can use them in your sales process to save time on sales, close bigger and bigger deals, prioritize your day and identify gaps in your sales process.
P.S. If you want to hear more about my own experiences with shedding, please read Zip Lining, Shedding, and the Art of Letting Go.
