Create checklists and flow charts to simplify your business

Yes, it seems almost too simple, right? After all, we already create checklists for when we go grocery shopping or when we have a project around the house… and our daily task list is also a checklist of sorts. But a simple answer is often the best answer! (Hey, even the medical profession has discovered the value of a checklist)

By creating checklists and flowcharts for your business, you become a master over all of your tasks. You also gain several advantages:

• You stop having to remembers stuff, so you can free up your brain to remember that more important stuff!
• You ensure that you don’t miss a step (which can happen even when you do something on autopilot).
• You break something down into basic steps, which can help you to see where you are spending your time (for better or for worse… and sometimes you can identify new profit opportunities that way).
• You identify opportunities to eliminate unnecessary steps and automate or outsource the steps you don’t need to do yourself.
• You highlight some of the areas where you are weaker and stronger, giving you an opportunity to improve or leverage.
• You make things really repeatable if you ever need to train someone to do what you do.
• You turn a big task into smaller tasks which you might be able to more easily fit into a busy schedule.
• You turn a big task into smaller, measurable tasks.
• (For flowcharts specifically) You create opportunities to predict outcomes and identify contingencies.

So, what can you create checklists and flowcharts for? Here are a few ideas:

• Make a list of the things you do everyday. Think of it as a HUGE checklist. Now turn each one of those things into one or more checklists.
• Make a list of the tasks you want to outsource some day. Create checklists for them now. (Yes, even if outsourcing is a long way off. You can still use that checklist yourself!)
• Make a list of the most important revenue-producing tasks you do. Create checklists for each of those.
• For situations where there is some complexity (such as client interactions — initial meetings, sales presentations, fact-finding discussions, etc.) create a flowchart with all of the possible scenarios.

Still want more ideas? Here are a few specific ones for the financial or real estate professionals:

• (For investment professionals) A checklist of the things you need to know about prospect to open their investment account.
• (For all financial and real estate professionals) A checklist of the things you need to know about a client to build rapport.
• (For insurance brokers) A checklist of the things you need to know about a client to sell them insurance.
• (For real estate professionals) A flowchart of most-important to least-important decision-making factors that clients have when searching for the perfect home.
• (For investment professionals) A flowchart of how you review a client’s investment portfolio.
• (For investment professionals) A checklist of what you need to cover whenever your investment client stops in for a visit. (Hint: Be sure to include “Asking for referrals!”).
• (For all financial and real estate professionals) A checklist of conversation starters whenever you meet someone. (Obviously you’ll want to commit this checklist to memory or YOU’LL be a conversation starter for them!).
• (For all financial and real estate professionals) A checklist of things you need to do when you write a blog post.
• (For all financial and real estate professionals) A flowchart of the most likely paths someone takes when you cold call them.
• (For real estate professionals) A checklist of things to bring with you when a client asks to list their home.
• (For real estate investors) A checklist of things to check for when a bird dog tells you about a home.
• (For accountants) A checklist of things to collect from clients when they bring in their taxes

I need to actually get some traction on it. Rather than writing it piece by piece and then finally revealing it at the end, I might benefit from some feedback from you… so I’m going to start writing it publicly and sharing it as I go. So as often as humanly possible (hopefully every 2 weeks or so), I’m going to publish another chapter on my blog.

The book is called The Sales Funnel Bible and it’s about how businesses can grow by focusing on their sales funnel.

A brief history of the Sales Funnel Bible

In case you’re curious, my interest in sales funnels started back during my MBA. I wrote my dissertation on a business strategy tool I’d developed called the Business Diamond Framework — a tool businesses could use to develop strategy throughout their business and make sure it was aligned with their organizational hierarchy as well as their value chain. (Okay, the full description is way more complicated but you get the idea).

That dissertation sparked an interest in building a framework for businesses that would ultimately increase success. And although my Business Diamond Framework was useful for larger businesses and higher level strategy, I found the simple sales funnel to be the most immediately beneficial for the financial entrepreneurs and real estate entrepreneurs I work with every day. What’s more, sales funnels are pretty well known as a concept but not a tool, so I think there is a lot of opportunity for any business that is armed with some sales funnel knowledge to really grow.

If you want to read more about sales funnels, check out the following blog posts…

• What is a sales funnel?
• Why is a sales funnel funnel-shaped?
• How does a sales funnel work?
• Why use a sales funnel in your business?

And be sure to come back and visit my blog to read the The Sales Funnel Bible chapters as I write them!

Everyone procrastinates. We hate it. We want to be productive. We know that productivity leads to greater achievement. But we all procrastinate anyway, at least in some things.

I’ve found a way to eliminate procrastination. It’s fun; it’s easy; and I end up getting lots of stuff done! So I’m sharing it here with you.

It’s a simple idea built on 5 premises that can be summed in as this: Your procrastinated projects are like zombies. And you need to fight them. Or else.

If you hate zombies and if you hate procrastination and want to get more done, this blog post is for you. (By the way, you can also download a free ebook version of Stop Procrastinating, Fight Zombies.

This is a LOOOOONG blog post.

In Part One, I’m going to discuss the 5 premises making up my belief that our procrastinated projects are like zombies. Each chapter adds to the idea so that, by the end, you’ll clearly see your procrastinated projects for what they are: The living dead that will relentlessly pursue you.

In Part Two, I’m going to show you how the principles you use to kill real zombies is the same principle you would use to kill zombie procrastinated projects. I’ve divided it into steps that you can take to transform your productivity and end procrastination for good.

In Part Three, I jammed in everything I couldn’t put somewhere else.

PART ONE: ATTACK OF THE ZOMBIES

In Part One, I’m going to discuss the 5 premises making up my belief that our procrastinated projects are like zombies. Each chapter adds to the idea so that, by the end, you’ll clearly see your procrastinated projects for what they are: The living dead that will relentlessly pursue you.

PREMISE #1: YOU HAPPILY LIVE YOUR OBLIVIOUS LIFE

A happy family goes about their daily routine: Kids go to school and learn; mom and dad go to work and do important things; in the evening they enjoy dinner and recount the joys and trials of the day. Later, they watch an episode of Law and Order before turning in for the night, eager to do the same thing tomorrow.

For the most part, life is good. The kids are doing okay in school, although little Billy is avoiding his math homework while littler Sally tries to get out of spelling. And mom and dad lecture Billy and Sally on the importance of doing the work they’re avoiding (but the truth is, mom was supposed to work on a report earlier in the day but cleaned her desk instead, and dad was supposed to prepare an annual employee review but instead he wrote his article for the monthly newsletter then read old copies of Golf Digest magazine hidden inside a financial statement).

They did stuff today, but not everything they should. And as they all turn in for the evening, we see a slovenly shadow skulking around the lawn… and it’s NOT Mr. Hoskins, the crazy guy from down the street. The shadowy figure’s shuffling gait and eerie moaning hint that this is something else. Something far scarier with an insatiable appetite for living flesh.

We’re not unlike that family. We live our lives and every day is filled with activities that need to get done. At the end of the day, if we got most of those tasks done, we’re happy folk and we can watch Law and Order with a clear conscience, satisfied with our productivity.

But lurking in the back of everyone’s minds is the reality that maybe they didn’t do everything they could have done. Or should have done. Or wanted to do. We started the day with the best of intentions: We ate a balanced breakfast, we were out the door almost on time, and we didn’t punch the annoying guy in the carpool. So far, 3 wins out of 3 in the morning.

But then that report showed up on our task list and we suddenly realized how messy our desk was. Or maybe that employee review sat there, taunting, while a dog-eared copy of Golf Digest seemed like a much more enjoyable way to spend the afternoon.

So we go to bed at night, happy that we did most of our work and hopeful that we’ll get to the other stuff tomorrow. But something is lurking outside on the lawn. And its dead eyes are focused on your living flesh.

PREMISE #2: THE DEAD SHOULDN’T TERRORIZE YOU (BUT THEY DO)

The family, unfortunately, is oblivious to the fact that something terrible has happened in the world. The undead have risen from their graves to hungrily feed on living flesh, but no one realizes it at first. Mom, Dad, Billy, and Sally get up the next day and go to school or work.

Everything progresses normally. At her job, mom wonders why some employees aren’t showing up and jealously suspects that Mary-Louise didn’t invite her to a Tupperware® party she was planning. And at his job, dad watches the janitor shuffle around and surmises that he’s been drinking again, although he smells more like death than vermouth.

At school, all seems well until a blood-curdling scream catches everyone’s attention. It belongs to Ms. Marten the guidance counselor who once coaxed better self-confidence about of shy kids, but everyone hears her gurgling pleas for the undead to stop feasting on her and suddenly everyone finds themselves remarkably shy. Zombies swarm the hallways and teachers lock classroom doors and frantically shout for the children to calm down.

The dead have arisen from their graves and are attacking. The first wave takes everyone by surprise. What these undead creatures lack in strategy, coherence, balance, and speed, they make up for in sheer numbers and a hunger that cannot be satisfied. Unsuspecting people are swarmed and succumb. Some fight back but are overcome. Many are dead before the first coffee break of the day.

Likewise, we face a similar situation. That report we put off, that client project that should have been done, that speech we should have written, each of those procrastinated projects are like the undead. Those projects should have been tackled and finished (or, at least started), but instead they lurk in our to-do lists like slow-witted zombies.

Chances are, there aren’t one or two or three of these projects, but a dozen or more zombie projects that we’ve procrastinated on.
The “why” doesn’t really matter; does it? Sure, a lot of people try to figure out the “why” of procrastinating. “Fear of failure” and “fear of success” are two of the most common reasons I’ve seen. And while they may be true, knowing that fact doesn’t help. We still procrastinate. We still find something else to do other than the thing (or things) that we should be doing.

Instead of doing what needs to be done, we do something else and we don’t deal with those undead projects. And at the end of the day it drives us crazy… but we’ll do it again tomorrow. Those zombie projects are terrorizing us!

PREMISE #3: ZOMBIES ARE RELENTLESS

Mom, Dad, Billy, and Sally try to survive. No matter how fast they run, or how far they go, or where they hide, the slow-shuffling zombies seem able to keep up. Perhaps it’s because they don’t need to eat, sleep, or shower, while our now-fearful family continues to require those basic survival necessities.

The family now needs to watch around every corner. They need to stand well back when they open the closet. They need to avoid backing into a dark room. If there’s one impressive quality that zombies have, it’s relentlessness. (It’s certainly not etiquette). Zombies are persistent in a way that is both annoying and scary.

And that’s the case with our procrastinated projects. They are relentless. They are persistent. They are always there, lurking on our schedules, on our to-do lists, on our tasks list, and on that list we keep on the fridge of stuff that doesn’t go on any other list in our lives. Every procrastinated project is hiding in the closet, under the stairs, in a dark room, or underneath the desk. That’s where they go because we sometimes try to put them out of our minds (and yet we see them every time we look at our time management systems).

We don’t work on those projects because there are other things we’d rather be doing. The project we should be working on seems less enjoyable than some other project (or time-filling activity). The project we should be working on seems unwieldy or confusing, whereas a few minutes on Twitter or Facebook doesn’t seem like a waste and can be far more engaging.

But in making that choice, we are making another, unwitting choice: We are allowing the things we don’t want to do to continue to annoy us, hassle us, lurk in our lives and on our to do lists until something happens.

That “something”-result could be that they just go away. Sometimes that happens, and it’s not always bad when those procrastinated projects disappear. Or that “something”-result could be far more dramatic and costly to us. Perhaps we lose face in front of our manager, or we set an entire project back by a week, or we lose a client. That happens, too. Occasionally, we do indeed stop procrastinating (but often it’s either last minute… or far too late).

Until something happens that makes these projects disappear or compels us to take them on, we are terrorized by these ill-mannered, every-present zombies that simply fill up space on our schedules and in our minds. We read books on getting rid of procrastination and we occasionally put some of it into practice but there is rarely an effective, long-lasting result.

PREMISE #4: YOU CAN ONLY RUN FOR SO LONG

The family is on the move. They’re driving down the Interstate in their 1985 wood-paneled station wagon. They’ve each got a sleeping bag, mom has made egg salad sandwiches, and the family dog Sport is the only unconcerned one among them and he shows his lack of concern by hanging his head out the window and letting the wind whip the drool from his tongue.

Everything is quiet and the only sound is dad puffing on his pipe. They’ve had a few close calls but nothing really bad has happened… yet. But what they don’t want to say, but they all somehow know, is that something bad will eventually happen. It’s a matter of when, not if. Will it be the next time dad stops for gas? Will it happen the next time Sport has to stop to do whatever dogs do? Or will it be the time after that? Or the time after that?

The family knows they may eventually run out of gas. And egg salad sandwiches. They know that mom will have to change her stilettos for a good pair of hiking shoes. But for now, they keep driving and hoping and watching anxiously in their rearview mirrors.

We do the same thing. Our procrastinated projects accumulate behind us like a horde of the undead and we, in our wood-paneled station wagons, avoid those zombie projects and keep driving, hoping that they’ll just go away. We know that we should do something about them. We know we can’t avoid them forever.

There will come a time when we run out of egg salad or gas, or the dog has to pee, and we will come face to face with the foul-smelling zombie project that we don’t want to think about but now can’t avoid looking at.

PREMISE #5: YOU WILL HAVE TO FIGHT AT SOME POINT

The tank is on empty and dad pulls into the gas station. He’s been thinking about something for the last 10 miles and he doesn’t know how to say it. Mom knows, too, because she’s seen his fingers unconsciously touch the shotgun that he once used to hunt turkeys with her father and brother (back before her brother joined a cult and became a vegan).

The kids sense something, too, because dad pulled off the road even though the sign in the dusty window of this roadside gas station says “no gas” (and they are all smart enough to figure out that the sign wasn’t placed there when the local mechanic was miraculously healed of an intestinal ailment).

This is not a stop for fuel. The family realizes that the time to run has ended. Those evil-smelling, shuffling crowds are never going to stop pursuing them. Those zombies will never be very far behind.

The time has come to fight; to lay it on the line and either live or die, but to at least take a stand. Rather than pressing on and waiting for the zombies to inevitably overtake them, the family knows that they will either win their freedom for another day or two by taking a stand right now.

And that’s what you need to do, too. Your procrastinated projects are never far behind. They are always going to relentlessly pursue you. As long as you avoid doing them, you are simply running from those zombies. No matter how much you try to evade them, they will inevitably catch up. What needs to happen is very simple. You need to stop running. You need to turn and fight. You need to start a zombie reckoning…

PART 2: THE RECKONING

In Part Two, I’m going to show you how the principles you use to kill real zombies is the same principle you would use to kill zombie procrastinated projects. I’ve divided it into steps that you can take to transform your productivity and end procrastination for good.

DRAW A LINE IN THE SAND

Zombies will continue to pursue you until they catch you. That’s what zombies do. Heck, that’s all that they can do. So the first thing you need to do is decide that you no longer want to run. You need to decide to stop procrastinating and instead you need to decide to turn and fight.

This is the point that most books about procrastination make… but they end here.

Part of the problem of procrastination is that it’s a non-event. We schedule our to-do’s and when we do them we’re productive and when we don’t do them we’ve procrastinated. Procrastination is never something you schedule in, yet it finds its way onto our schedules anyway by being the unconscious default state when we’re not productive.

So, if you are serious about stopping procrastination, you need keep it from becoming an unconscious default state by actively addressing it. And you can do this by adding zombie fighting into your schedule. Okay, so you don’t have to write “fight zombies” in your schedule, especially if you’re on a shared calendar at work and your anal retentive coworkers don’t share your fascination with the undead. But you can make an appointment with Mr. Z or you can block out a period of time for a “project” (and that project happens to be the steps that we are talking about here).

How much should you block out? I find that 30 minutes a couple times a week is good. I’ll talk more about that specific amount of time later in the blog post. If you have a lot of projects that you procrastinate on (say, more than 10) or if you have fast cycles on your projects (faster than two or three days) you may want to do shorter zombie-fighting bursts throughout the week.

But for most people I suspect that zombie fighting twice a week will be more than enough. If you’re not sure, start by scheduling it in on Tuesday and Thursday. If it’s not enough, try scheduling it in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If that’s still not enough, schedule it in every day. And if that’s not enough, you may have bigger problems than I can address in this blog post.

ACTION STEP:

• Schedule 30 minutes of procrastination-busting productivity at least twice a week. If you have a lot of projects that get procrastinated, consider scheduling it more frequently.

CREATE A BUNKER AND GET READY

A bunker is where you have your last stand. In the story you read earlier in this blog post, it was the “no gas” gas station. A zombie-fighting bunker is a safe place that has all the ammunition you can gather, a little food in case you are there for a while, and maybe a few Mad Libs to burn off the hours that you are waiting. You know that this is where you will either defend yourself for a few more days or you’ll go down fighting.

Zombie fighting is best done with a bunker mentality. You set up a fortress, you get prepared, and then you wait for the zombies to come to you. And they will, because that’s all they know how to do.

In the world of zombie productivity, a bunker is your work area. It’s also a mental state of readiness. The distractions are minimized: The telephone is set to go right to voicemail. The various emails/Twitter/Facebook/IM connecting points you have need to be off.

You should go to the bathroom first. You should hang a “do not disturb” sign on your door.

You will also need:

• A timer.
• A penchant for killing the undead.
• A red pen or marker.
• You will need 4 slips of paper (print out the ones on page 45 of the downloadable ebook or design your own to look something like this:

That’s it. There’s not much you need when putting together your bunker and getting ready to fight.

ACTION STEPS:

• Adopt a “last stand” mentality.
• Have a timer, 4 slips of paper, and a red marker handy.

AIM FOR THE HEAD

In your bunker, you’ve been playing Mad Libs and singing campfire songs and reminiscing about what life was like before zombies. You all express regret over not calling your mothers just one more time. Then the lookout, who has been watching diligently between the cracks in the boarded-up window, says that she sees zombies on the horizon. An attack is imminent.

In your zombie-fighting bunker, you get ready to fight those procrastinated projects on your horizon. You put aside your Mad Libs. You stop reminiscing. It’s now time to get serious.

Set your timer for 10 minutes. Then, pull out the 4 slips of paper that look like this…

… and select 4 procrastinated projects you need to deal with. You’ll only have time to deal with 4 projects. On another day, you can deal with 4 more. The temptation here will be to deal with the easiest 4 but you should just pick 4 randomly. (Someday you might only have a couple of projects but right now you might have far more than four).

On each of the 4 slips of paper, write down the names of the projects like this:

Do that for each project. One title on one slip of paper. Easy so far!

Next, is the real secret of this whole system.

Ask any zombie-killing expert how to kill a zombie and they will tell you: You need to aim for the head. If you cut off a leg or just punch them in the nose, they’ll keep coming. You need to cut off their head.

Your procrastinated zombie-projects have a head, too. It’s usually the most important part of the project and it is often (although not always) the part that you are procrastinating on.

On the slip of paper, write down the most important part of the project that you still need to do. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t started the project or if you’re part way through or nearly done. The most important part is often the biggest, most unwieldy part of the project or the biggest “grind”. It’s the part that takes sitting down and actually doing. It’s different for every project but you know exactly what I’m talking about.

In college, while studying for exams, the part that was never procrastinated was the gathering of notes and textbooks and pouring of coffee. The part that was procrastinated was opening the books and getting down to the grind of the work – the most important part.

Also in college, those procrastinated zombie term papers. Coming up with a thesis statement was easy enough. Maybe even outlining your main points was doable. But opening up the source material and pulling out notes was excruciating… and avoided.

At work, salespeople often find that little aspects of their job are easy to do – from administrative puttering to rereading sales reports – but picking up the phone to call prospects is the far more difficult but far more fundamental part of the job.

Also at work, the presentation is left until the last minute because it is a grind to figure out what you want to say, put together supporting slides, getting handouts for everyone, and knowing that people will barely listen anyway.

Get it? I hope so. Just write down the most important part of the job. Like so:

In the example above, the employee review just needed to have pen put to paper as the most important thing.

This should take a total of 10 minutes. If it takes less than 10 minutes, even better! If it takes more than 10 minutes, you are probably spending too long figuring out what the most important part of your projects might be. I believe you instinctively know what the most important parts are most of the time.

ACTION STEPS:

• Write down the project.
• Write down the most important part of the project (which is often the part you are procrastinating on).

SHOOT THE ONE CLOSEST TO YOU

As the zombies approach, there is little need to make strategic decisions. They shuffle slowly, unceasingly over the horizon. They amble at a pace that might be mistaken for a casual, drunken saunter. You don’t need to think, you just need to shoot. At the one closest to you.

Bang.

Nice work. Now, shoot at the one that is next closest you.

Bang.

Good. See how easy this is? Now shoot at the one that is next closest to you…

And so it is with those slips of paper, each listing a zombie project. Put them all into a nice little pile. Don’t think about the ones below. Don’t think about how you should later be putting together a presentation for your boss. Don’t think about whether you need to buy whole wheat or white bread on the way home from work. Just think about the zombie project that is closest to you.

Now here’s what to do: Look at the first sheet of paper. Read the most important thing you can do on that project. Start the timer. And begin. Do the most important thing for 5 minutes. Just 5 minutes. That’s it. Do as much as you can as fast as you can on that one project for 5 minutes.

When the timer dings, take out your red marker and draw an “x” through the stick zombie’s head on your paper. Bang! You’ve just shot your first zombie in the head. Like this:

Put the paper aside, throw it on the floor, or put it to the bottom of the stack so you don’t see it. (You’ll need it in a minute, though, so don’t throw it out).

ACTION STEPS:

• Select the top project.
• Spend 5 minutes working intensely on the most important part of that project.
• “X” out the project when your 5 minutes is up and put the paper aside.

SHOOT THEM ALL

You don’t take a stand against just one zombie. You deal with a bunch. You shoot the one closest to you and then you move on to the next one. It’s not rocket science, it’s self preservation!

And that’s how it is with your zombie project killing-fest. After you’ve spent 5 minutes shooting the first zombie project in the head, switch to the next project.

Grab the next paper off the pile. Aim for the zombie head by reading the most important thing that needs to happen on the project. Then reset the timer for 5 minutes and start this one.

Work for 5 furious minutes on the most important part of the project. When the timer dings, “X” out the head, throw it on the ground, and go on to the next one. Do this for twenty minutes total (which, in case you failed third grade math, is 4 projects at 5 minutes each).

ACTION STEP:

• Do all 4 projects by taking one project at a time and working for 5 minutes on the most important part.

MAKE SURE THEY ARE DEAD

In some cases, you’ll shoot a zombie in the head and it’s gone for good. But sometimes your aim isn’t perfect. You just winged it. Now that you have a bunch of rotting dead-then-undead-then-mostly-dead-again corpses lying on the ground in front of your bunker, you need to go around and make sure they are dead.

So here’s what to do: Pick up one of your 4 projects and list three things you can do on that project in the next 3 days. Keep each task under 15 minutes. If the task takes longer, list it 3 times.

Some ideas for what to schedule:
A continuation of the work you’ve started. This is often the most effective choice for a next task since you’ve “popped the cork” and built some momentum in your project. You’ll be able to easily approach and complete this next step because there are no barriers; the work has already been started.

Going back a step and doing the work that you need to do before you can get very far into the “most important part” of the project.

Starting on the next consecutive step or the next most important part of the project.

Schedule these into your schedule and move on to the second, third, and fourth project. Schedule those three 15 minute projects for as soon as humanly possible in your schedule.

ACTION STEP:

• Schedule three 15 minute momentum-sustaining activities for as soon as possible.

SET UP A WARNING SYSTEM

Just because you were successful this time around doesn’t mean that you’ve eradicated the world from zombies. There are more coming, just over the hill. You’ve bought yourself time but there will be others.

So what can you do? Well, you can set up a warning system so that zombies who stumble over your alarm will inadvertently warn you that they are there. And, as an added bonus, zombies aren’t that stealthy so you don’t have to be very covert.

There are warning systems you can incorporate into your life to make sure that you’re aware when zombies are advancing. In my experience, I’ve found that there are 3 “signals” that indicate to me when a project has turned into a zombie:

1. The project gets moved from one day to the next for 2 days in a row. (Yes, sometimes it’s because I’m busy and had to push it off but more often than not I’m aware of what my schedule is like and it’s just a matter of not getting to it). If 2 days is too tight of a timeline for you, make it 3 days: If a project gets pushed 3 days without being touched, it’s turned into a zombie. (Note: You need to be honest with yourself here because sometimes you can trick yourself into thinking that you’ve touched a project when all you’ve really done is just the easy preliminary work).
2. Projects in a numbered sequence get skipped. I like to number my projects and do them in order. I’m not militant about it but it’s a good way for me to watch for zombie projects: As I go through from one number to the next, I’ll sometimes skip a number and that’s my signal that I’ve got a zombie on my hands.
3. You look at your to-do list and check Facebook, Twitter, or email instead. Yes, we might need to access these or other sites throughout the day as part of our work. However, when we look at our schedule and see a particular task but we do these (or similar) distractions instead, we’ve got a zombie problem.

These 3 warning signs are very effective ways of alerting you that you have a zombie to address during your next scheduled zombie-fighting.

ACTION STEP:

• Set up warning systems to identify your procrastinated projects before they get too old.

PART 3: MORE STUFF ABOUT ZOMBIES AND ABOUT PROJECTS

In Part Three, I jammed in everything I couldn’t put somewhere else.

WHY THIS WORKS

This whole zombie thing works. It works for three reasons:

1. Procrastination is a non-event and it’s our default state so it sneaks into our schedules without us realizing it. By proactively scheduling zombie-fighting time, we acknowledge that it exists and it allows us to define what is normally a not-easily-defined “headspace”.
2. Procrastination occurs because there’s a project (or a part of a project) that we don’t want to start (or restart). Often, people find that once they “pop the cork” and get a bit of critical mass and momentum, the project goes faster and easier than they thought. We can get a surprising amount of work done in 5 minutes, and most of us are happy to do something we don’t want to do for just 5 minutes. Much longer than that, though, and the theory falls apart. (For example, in my experience, trying this for 10 minute segments isn’t nearly as successful).
3. And it’s fun. Yeah, you might not love zombies as much as the next person but it puts a face (an ugly, smelly, undead face) onto your productivity. Most procrastination books can be pretty clinical. They aim for professionalism, which is okay, but procrastination isn’t solved with clinical professionalism. Procrastination is solved far more effectively with fun!

TIPS FOR BETTER ZOMBIE FIGHTING

Have fun. That is the most effective way to fight procrastination.

Do as much as you humanly can in the 5 minutes allotted for that zombie project. No cheating!

Schedule zombie-fighting time regularly. At least twice a week. If you get to that time and don’t have anything to do, reward yourself.

Make a commitment to someone. (“I’m going to shut my office door and when I come out, I’m going to have started 4 projects”).

Brag about your effort. Go onto Twitter and tweet that you’ve just done some zombie killing. Add #zombieprojects so the rest of us notice.

When thinking about the “head” of the project, be sure to write down a project that will take at least 5 minutes or more. Performing a task that only takes 30 seconds (and then twiddling your thumbs for the other 4 1/2 minutes) is likely not the part of the project that you were procrastinating on. Remember that the whole secret to success of this system is that you are popping the cork to get the project moving again.

This works on just about anything from business projects to personal projects to chores around the house to home renovation projects to working out.

When you schedule the 3 additional actions on the project, try to keep them as close as possible to the type of work you were already doing on the project. Momentum is easier to maintain when it follows in a straight line.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Why zombies?
Zombies are awesome! Also, zombies are things that should be dead but aren’t and they seem to always stick around until we decide to do something about them. I don’t know about your projects but that describes my projects perfectly.

I don’t like zombies. They are gross.
Yes they are gross. I’m sorry you don’t like them. Also, you haven’t asked a question.

Does this system work?
Yes it does. Try it out twice a week for a month. What do you have to lose? An hour a week. And what could you potentially gain? A whole bunch of increased productivity on projects that you were avoiding.

Why does this work?
Procrastination is about doing something that seems to be more enjoyable than the project you’re avoiding. But if you can make the project itself more enjoyable – and if you acknowledge procrastination through more effective scheduling – then it changes the circumstances.

Can I do more than 4 projects in one session?
You can try. But you’re going to face 2 challenges:

1. Scheduling more than 30 minutes a day on this project is going to end up making it something that you are tempted to procrastinate on, which defeats the purpose.
2. This can actually be exhausting work. Four projects at 5 minutes each is okay. If you’re working as diligently and focused as you can, you’ll want a break after 20 minutes. I’ve tried it for longer – up to an hour – and found it was more exhausting than one might think.

Can I work on projects for more than 5 minutes at a time?
You might not want to. Five minutes is a good amount of time: You can get a surprising amount of work done, it’s a period of time that doesn’t seem like a huge commitment (which helps to eliminate the potential to procrastinate) and you may end up with an excitement because you were “just getting into the project” when the timer stopped. This feeling is good! It will help your momentum when you continue the project later.

Are there any projects that this system doesn’t work on?
I haven’t found any, although you might find it to be challenging if the “head” activity requires you to go somewhere or talk to someone. This can often take more than 5 minutes. In those cases, I will write down a different head in the ten minutes prior to the zombie-fighting activity. Or, if it’s the only thing I can possibly do on the project, I’ll save it as my last zombie project and I’ll go and do it and just take as long as it needs to take.

What if the “head” of my project requires me to do something else first?
This is tricky! It can lead to Yak Shaving. Sometimes we have no choice but to do something else first. You will encounter those from time to time. But often I will try to do the “head” task – the most important task – no matter what, even if it normally would require me to do some preliminary activity first.

The reason is: I usually don’t have a problem with the preliminary activity; it’s usually that more significant and challenging task that is keeping me from the project. Even if I end up going back and having to redo some of the work I did during my 5 minutes of zombie-fighting that project, I would rather pop the cork and get the most difficult part of the project done first.

Rarely is any project so completely isolated from one stage to the next that you can’t do something on a later stage first.

Will this help me to fight real zombies?
My lawyers tell me to say “no”. (But between you and me, I think it can).

Can I buy the movie rights from you?
Have your people call my people. And if you can get Henry Winkler to play a zombie, I’d even give you a discount.

What’s your favorite zombie movie?
The first zombie move I ever saw was George A. Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead. It was great. My favorite zombie movie (although purists might argue that it’s not technically a zombie movie) is 28 Days Later.

PROACTIVE PRODUCTIVITY

It’s nice to be productive even when it doesn’t involve zombies. Although I love fighting zombie projects, it’s great when you get to your zombie-fighting time in the week and you don’t have any zombies to fight! I can break out the latest copy of Golf Digest or turn on the TV and watch Days of Our Lives or learn to yodel.

To avoid creating zombies, you need to be productive. I’ve found the following techniques to be useful, although they might not work in every situation.

I revisit my productivity hourly. Yes, hourly. No, I’m not kidding. I have a timer and I set it for an hour. When the timer dings, I check my mental state, I revisit what I wanted to accomplish in the last hour and then preview what I want to accomplish in the next hour. It takes about 10 seconds but it’s a great way to stay on top of my productivity and destroy procrastination before it even starts.

I have made a commitment to myself to start on all new projects within 1 hour of getting the assignment. I may not get very far into it – especially if I have other things going on in that hour – but the basic act of opening a document, doing some initial reading and review of the project, and maybe creating a quick outline is often a good start. This is true on all client work I do as well as on *some* personal projects (but not nearly as much as I’d like. Note to self: Make sure I’m starting more).

Recognize and eliminate the failure points. I’m a pretty good starter but where I (and lots of other people) struggle is when the nose-to-the-grindstone effort kicks in. Then it’s far more fun to move on to something else. These are potential failure points where zombies tend to rise from their graves. You can keep them from happening by outsourcing a bunch of your work that normally happens around this point (check out the place where I get my assistant: http://contemporaryva.com).

Figure out what is manageable for you. Over the years I’ve discovered that a lot of my projects easily divide into 15 minute segments. I’m not sure why that is but it is. (Maybe for you it’s 10 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes). Whatever. Find out what your magic time is and build your schedule around it. Don’t block out an hour for 1 big project. You might find that you can do it more effectively if you break it up into four smaller 15 minute projects throughout the day.

ZOMBIE CARDS

Print out the zombie cards in the downloadable ebook and use them for each zombie-fighting session. Or, if you don’t want to waste paper, just use scrap paper and your own artistically-crafted stick-figure zombie.

If you print cards from the downloadable ebook, make sure you also break out your blue-handled safety scissors and cut them up into four individual slips of paper. You’ll be more likely to do the work when you only look at one project at a time.

NOTES

You can download a free copy of the Stop Procrastinating, Fight Zombies ebook here.

Want to read more about productivity? Check out 2 lists that have transformed my productivity, a great article about productivity at HarvardBusiness.org, and the 5 success principles I’m adopting for 2012.

Photo credit: The zombie photo is provided by Daniel Hollister and is compliant with the Creative Commons 3.0 license. You can get your own copy of this very awesome picture at www.ThatZombiePhoto.com. It’s one of the best zombie pictures available online.

Planning is good but by the end of January, there’s a good chance that most of those plans fall apart under the pressure of reality (which is why a lot of year-round gym membership-holders avoid the gym in January to let all the enthusiastic people join and then leave).

Plans don’t always work because their main ingredients are hope and luck. If you want to eliminate hope and luck, try developing a kick-ass plan.

HOW TO CREATE A KICK-ASS PLAN

1. A kick-ass plan starts with a goal and the steps to achieve that goal but if you stop there, you’ve only done what a lot of people do. You’ll do okay (better than if you just create a goal and no steps) but I’m about to show you a way to take your goal-setting up a notch!
2. Next, you need to plus your goal. (Add something to your goal to make it really special — to increase its value and importance). Adjust your steps as necessary.
3. For each step in your plan, identify your capabilities and requirements. Then determine what strengths you have to succeed and what weaknesses you have that could hold you back. Mitigate those weaknesses through investments in automation… or see if there is someone in your network who can help you. (Try tweeting out to your network that you need help in some specific thing and watch what happens. What a great way to see just how much value your network places in you.)
4. Determine how to start strong. For some of you (especially this time of year), this won’t be a problem. But for some, there might be issues of procrastination or feelings of overwhelmedness that need to be conquered first. Figure out if anything is going to hold you back from starting and then figure out how to jam down on the accelerator very early in the project.
5. Starting is good but what you really want to is attain critical mass quickly. This gives your project some life of its own because you see success. Figure out how you define critical mass for your particular project and how you can get there as soon as possible.
6. Next, look for opportunities to maintain momentum. Project inertia ensures that you keep plugging away regardless of the peaks and valleys that you might experience along the way. (Confession: This is another area I’m working on. It’s easy for me to slow down or even stop when the middle-of-the-project doldrums hit). I need to build little motivations into my projects to keep me going. Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a break or rewarding myself with a trip to Starbucks if I get complete a certain number of steps.
7. Determine your finishing alternatives. We all want to achieve a project well but often that “winning finish” isn’t well defined. We need to define it clearly.
8. A winning finish is idea… but it doesn’t always happen. We also need to consider some potential contingencies. You don’t need to go overboard here (or else you’ll end up over-planning and you’ll never get to your project) but you can do a simple A-B-C-D contingency planning: (A) is the ideal finish. (B) is a moderate finish in which some of the winning finish characteristics are present and some are not. (C) is a finish but not something you would define as a win. (D) is if the project doesn’t finish. You’re not grading the project, you’re anticipating what could happen to cause these four potential scenarios and deciding what you can do to make sure an idea finish is the most likely outcome. (For more thoughts on contingency planning, read about a time when I accidentally stabbed myself).
9. If you’re already busy, you’ll need to also do this: Figure out what you’re willing to give up to make it happen. (Note: this is a HUGE area of struggle for me and something I’ve been trying to work on in my own business. I love to do a lot but I’ve started to realize in the past year or two that if I adopt something new, I need to give up something else).
10. Figure out what habits need to change in order to succeed. Do you need to be more diligent so you can blog every day? Do you need to stop procrastinating? Do you need to screw up your courage to make more sales calls? Maybe you need to get desperate!
11. Lastly, become an action figure and blaze forward by doing what needs to be done!. (More on that in this blog post: The entrepreneur’s silver bullet).

If you’ve got this far in my blog, you’re probably thinking to yourself: “Isn’t this insanely time consuming? Is Aaron crazy?”

The answer is yes… to both questions (although there’s nothing I can do about the second question so I’ll just address the first question).

This IS time consuming. But it works. It turns your luck-and-hope plans into real, actionable, achievable kick-ass plans.

Besides, you’ll spend far more time working part-way through your plan and fizzling out than you will if you put in some time in advance to go through these steps. An investment of time at the beginning to develop a kick-ass plan will help your project be more successful, and will help you to achieve it faster and with fewer challenges.

It’s the end of December. Time to fill out your Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up.

Are you ready for next year?!?

Wondering what the heck a Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up is? Read the first Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up blog post that kicked it all off!

Wondering what the heck a Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up is? Read the first Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up blog post that kicked it all off!

Wondering what the heck a Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up is? Read the first Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up blog post that kicked it all off!

One important way to create client loyalty is to build a relationship with them. The deeper the relationship, the more likely they’ll be to come back to you for future services. But building relationships isn’t easy – you probably have lots of clients and it’s hard to keep them all straight.

Here’s a tool that can help. It’s a simple list of questions to help you get to know your clients better. Don’t hand over this list to your clients to fill it out and don’t pepper them with all of the questions at once. In fact, not all of these questions can even be answered by the client! Answer as many questions about each client as you can. Then identify a couple of questions that you want to discover the next time you talk to them. Sometimes you can ask the question directly; other times you’ll have to communicate with your client and use clues to discover the real answer.

Use this list as a guide to understand your client better and as a foundation to build a relationship with them.

HERE’S HOW TO USE THE ANSWERS

• Use the answers to build rapport: “Your daughter is in piano? So is my daughter. I’ll watch for you at the next recital!”
• Use the answers to prompt future sales: For example, a child’s birthday might be good reminders to sell insurance or an adult’s birthday might be a good time to revisit their retirement fund.
• Use the answers to start future conversations: “Hey, how did your son’s little league tournament go last weekend?”
• Use the answers to look for referral opportunities: “If anyone in your business networking group happens to be looking for key man insurance, let them know that I specialize in insurance for small businesses.”
• Use the answers to help you understand your clientele and shape your business accordingly: If many of your clients are young families, the products you offer might shift over time as your clients’ children age.
• Use these answers to help you understand how to market your business: Once you have these question lists started for your clients, you can fill out the questions in the blog post 55 questions to answer when defining your sales funnel’s target market. (In fact, you’ll notice that some of the questions below are closely connected to the target market questions).

61 QUESTIONS TO ASK

1. What is your client’s age?




2. What is your client’s gender?




3. What is the your client’s ethnic heritage?




4. What language does your client speak as their primary language?




5. Where does your client live?




6. Who else lives at that address?




7. What does your client do for a living?




8. What is your client’s approximate income range?




9. What are your client’s hobbies?




10. What teams, leagues, groups, and associations does your client belong to?




11. What kind of music does your client like to listen to?




12. What kind of car does your client drive?




13. What sports does your client follow?




14. What kind of education does your client have?




15. What are the things that your client aspires to do? (i.e. Climb the corporate ladder? Give their children the best opportunities?)




16. What kind of house does your client aspire to live in?




17. What kind of car does your client aspire to drive?




18. If your client seems themself in a “lifestage”, what would that lifestage be?




19. What would your client say is the next lifestage that they should move toward?




20. How can you help them get to that next lifestage?




21. What does your client consider to be important to them?




22. How does your client define happiness and success?




23. What kind of personality would describe your client?




24. What motivates your client?




25. What fears does your client have?




26. What are the problems that your client wants solved in their lives?




27. What are the challenges that your client faces in their day-to-day lives? (Unlike the above question, this question forces you to consider other challenges — even ones that your client wouldn’t define as a problem to be solved).




28. What value does your client place on family? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




29. What value does your client place on friends? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




30. What value does your client place on their work? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




31. What value does your client place on recognition and status? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




32. What value does your client place on happiness? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




33. What value does your client place on fear of loss? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




34. What value does your client place on money? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




35. What value does your client place on time? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




36. What value does your client place on leisure time and activities? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




37. What value does your client place on peace of mind? (i.e. more important or less important than other factors in their life).




38. Who influences your client?




39. Who does your client influence?




40. Where does your client like to spend their time?




41. What are the most important purchases to your client?




42. If your client had an extra $100, what would they spend it on? What if they had an extra $1000? What if they won $1 million dollars?




43. If your client had a week where they had no work-related commitments, what would they do? Where would they go? Who would they go with?




44. What are the top 10 tasks that fill the to-do lists of your client?




45. How does your client define the problem that you solve or the need that you fulfill? (i.e., What words to they use? What “symptoms” trigger a search for a solution? Check out this blog post, which gives a closer look at the Audience stage.)




46. What does your client consider to be risky? (Time, effort, money, and reputation are the big ones)




47. Who will your client have to face if they buy your product or service and it doesn’t meet their needs?




48. What other alternatives does your client have to solve their problem or fulfill their need? (Be sure to include competitors’ products and services as well as alternate offerings that aren’t direct competitors but still solve the problem. And don’t forget: Do nothing is also an alternative!)




49. What reasons would your client give for not purchasing your product or service?




50. How familiar is your client with the solution you’re offering? (i.e., is it entirely new and requires a lot of explaining or is it a very familiar solution?)




51. How is your client changing? (i.e., what answers to this list of questions will be different next year or in the next decade, and why?)




52. Does your client have a spouse? What is his/her name and age?




53. What is your client’s spouse’s hobbies?




54. Does your client have any children? How many? What are their names and ages?




55. What activities do your client’s children take part in?




56. What products/services has your client bought from you in the past?




57. What products/services has your client bought from your competitors in the past?




58. What products/services is your client most likely to buy next from you?




59. What would your client say is the most important reason that he/she uses your services?




60. What would it take to get your client to switch service providers and get the same service you offer but from someone else?




61. What would it take to lock your client in to working exclusively with you for the rest of their lives?

Wondering what the heck a Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up is? Read the first Monthly Sales Funnel Check-up blog post that kicked it all off!

I don’t lose a wink of sleep over the changes I make. I’m less concerned about whether my blog theme looks consistent every day of the week. Rather, I’m more concerned with a far more important question:

It’s true that consistency is critical. But what’s more important to me is testing and optimizing to improve my ability to acquire and retain more customers who are more profitable.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU

Okay, the number of themes I’ve used on my blog isn’t really the point of this post. It’s just a way to introduce what I want to talk about today: Every business owner needs to break apart everything in their business and test it and then they need to optimize what they’ve found based on the findings from their test.

It’s a really simple formula:

1. Test everything in your business.
2. Optimize everything in your business.
3. Repeat forever.

That’s one of the top “secrets” to business success. I’ve never met a successful business owner who didn’t test. And I’ve never met a struggling business owner who tested religiously. I can say almost unequivocally that testing leads to success.

When you test, you identify what works and what doesn’t. Then you optimize that particular element of your business and you implement it and test it again.

Actually, we already do this in other aspects of our life without realizing it: When you meet someone who could be a potential romantic partner, but things don’t work out, you might realize that you introduced them to your weird quirks a little too early in the relationship. That was a type of test and you learned your lesson from it. Next time, you won’t reveal until much later in the relationship that your hobby is to carve Star Trek characters out of butter.

WHAT YOU SHOULD TEST

When I say “test everything”, I’m not exaggerating. Break apart your business and test it all: Test the big stuff like your brand, your target market, your marketing content, your deliverables, and your methodologies; and test the little stuff like your email footer, the days and times that you post on your blog; and whether you follow-up with a prospect 1 day or 2 days after your first contact with them.

I used my blog theme as an example, but I test everything. In fact, the element of my business that I test the most is my sales proposal. Since the very first day I hung out my “freelance writer” shingle, I have diligently recorded massive amounts of data about my sales proposal. As a result, it’s a finely tuned sales-generating machine that has earned me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here’s how to identify some of the most important things to test: Start with your sales funnel. Break your sales funnel into stages and then into steps (which I’ve covered in blog posts like Sales Funnel 101: How does a sales funnel work and Identifying the steps in your sales funnel).

Then test each step.

Here’s an example of a really simple sales funnel with a few steps in each stage. In black are the current sales funnel stages and steps. And I’ve used a green font-color to identify some ideas about how you can test that step:

Audience

1. Article marketing leads to Twitter follow. (Test other methods to lead to a Twitter follow, such as press releases or promoted tweets. Or, point your article marketing to something else, like directly to your website.)

Leads

1. Twitter follow leads to initial Twitter-based interaction. (Test the types of interaction you get and what kinds of interaction gets people advancing in your sales funnel. For example, will a frequent retweeter advance in your sales funnel faster than someone who replies to you?)
2. Twitter-based interaction leads to website visit. (Test where they are clicking. For example, are they clicking on a specific tweet or are they clicking on the URL in your profile? And, if they click on the URL in your profile, try sending them to a different page on your website and see what happens.)
3. Website visit leads to email newsletter sign-up. (Test how you ask for an email newsletter sign-up: Test different placements of the form, test different colors, test calls to action, and test a 1-step and 2-step call to action.)

Prospects

1. Email newsletter sign-up leads to regular click-through interaction. (Test your email’s subject lines, length of body content, number of links in the content, placement of links, and PS content.)
2. Regularly click through interaction leads to a purchase. (Test links to different kinds of information and different levels of financial commitment from free to high-end).

Customers

1. A purchase leads to another purchase. (Test which products or services lead to additional products or services.)

Evangelists

1. Frequent purchases lead to word of mouth referral. (Test other ways of getting people to evangelize. For example, ask for a backlink, ask for a testimonial, ask for a Linkedin Recommendation, etc.)

Okay, so that is a good example of a really simple sales funnel and some ideas about testing. You’ll note that within each step of the sales funnel, there are many things to test.

And although you should start by testing the elements in your sales funnel, don’t stop there. Test other non-sales-funnel-related aspects of your business, too. For example, test other methods of performing administrative tasks or conducting meetings.

Ultimately, what you decide to test should be informed by the goals of your business. If you sell a service to a customer (like most of my financial and real estate clients do) then everything you test should be geared toward getting more profitable customers to buy from you over and over again.

HOW TO TEST

By now, I hope you’re convinced and inspired to test. So the next question is: How do you test successfully?

I am going to blog a bit more about this in the near future (I’ve been doing some high-level planning about that topic just this weekend) but here is a quick-and-dirty way to test:

1. Once you’ve figured out what you want to test (see above), identify the metric and/or method of testing. How will you know that your test was successful or unsuccessful? To borrow from the sales funnel example above, if you are going to test a different way of building a Twitter audience besides article marketing, you’ll want to start by identifying a metric that is useful to you. Number of Twitter followers seems to make sense but you’ll need to narrow it down further. For example, number of Twitter followers within a specific period of time. Better yet, identify the number of Twitter followers in your target market who follow you within a specific period of time.
2. Get a benchmark. Figure out what your current success rate is today. So if you are going to measure the number of Twitter followers in your target market who follow you within a specific period of time because of your articles, you’ll need to dig into a bit of research to find that information out. But once you do, you have a place to start. For example, you might write an article and post it and then watch your Twitter following grow for that particular week. Then check the profiles of your Twitter followers to do a quick check to see if they are in your target market or not. (See my disclaimer following this list).
3. Perform your test. Now do whatever it is that you were going to do differently as your test. In the example I’ve been using here, maybe you’ll write a press release and publish it and see how many Twitter followers you get in a week (and don’t forget to check their profiles to see if they are in your target market or not).
4. Decide what to do next based on that information. You’ll generally have the following results based on what you’ve found: (1) The test proved that the new method was better and you decide to replace the old method with the new method. (2) The test was not clear and you need to test again. (3) The test proved that your old method remains superior.
5. Perform a similar test at a different time to see if the season was a factor, OR perform a different test on this step in your sales funnel, OR perform a completely different test on a different element in your business.

(Disclaimer: Metrics-savvy people will easily shoot holes in my example of these metrics because they do not account for other factors, such as Twitter followers who follow you for some other reason or because of older content online. It’s true that these factors could impact your metrics but I’m just trying to give readers a quick and easy first step into testing. As you become more proficient in testing, you will find tools and techniques to help you eliminate these other factors… but the most important thing I can suggest is: Just get started by testing something in your business!).

GET STARTED!

I cannot stress enough the importance of testing in your business. In the coming weeks, I’ll be talking about some ways that you can test successfully. But my advice is: Just get started. Add a test into your weekly schedule. It doesn’t have to be a perfect test using a perfect metric. By simply starting, you’ll have already advanced your business further than other business owners who squander their time in testless oblivion.