Tracking your Winning Behaviours
The next module is a spreadsheet is like Marmite – you’ll either love it or hate it.
Called 12 Week of Winning Behaviours, it’s a prompt to help you keep taking those actions each week that will win you more work.
Some clients jump on it, and populate it with their actions points, and complete it each day diligently. Others have a poke around at it, then never look at it again.
So if it works for you, great.
100 Actions
Let’s say in week 1, it takes you 100 actions to find a new piece of work.
By week 4, you’ll have improved your techniques, which means that actually, you only need to take 75 actions to find it.
However, you still have to take those actions.
If you do 5 a week, it’s going to take you 15 weeks to find work. If you do 25, it’s only going to take you 3. Now, we know it’s not quite as literal as that, but the more actions you take, the quicker results will come.
This spreadsheet is designed to help you track those actions.
How to use this spreadsheet
Behaviours Column
This should identify the actions – or behaviours – you’re going to take in key categories:
Campaign 1: Sales
These are the actions you take which are DIRECTLY looking for work.
Campaign 2: Sales Support
These are the activities which create the assets and connections you need. They might passively bring you work, but you can also spend a lot of time focusing on these, rather than picking up the phone and looking for work.
Campaign 3: Stuff that doesn’t make money
These are the activities that take time, and its good to remember you’re not getting paid for this work. For example, it’s easy to sink a whole day into improving your portfolio, but you’re not getting paid for it. Working for half a day, then spending half a day sending it to people would be better!
Campaign 4: Keeping me fighting fit
As well as this sales work, you need to keep yourself happy and healthy. This should be a series of activities which you hopefully enjoy, that are making sure you stay active and are looking after your mental health.
I also find if add a gym session to my day, I find I focus on my work better, wanting to complete tasks before I go. Without the gym trip, my day can drift.
Lagging Indicators
These are the results you are hoping to see. You give a number for them, so you can track how well you’re doing.
Time Column
This is the number of minutes you predict the task will take. This allows you to see at the bottom the total number of hours you are committing each week. Ideally, it’s 10 – 14 hours a week. Over 16, and you’re working two full days on your business, which might be too much.
Measure Column
This is how many you’re going to do. So, you might have “Post on LinkedIn” and you might commit to 2. Or “Like posts on LinkedIn” could be 10. This populates across the table.
Completing the sheet
Start in the top column, cell D2, you need to add the Monday of the week you’re starting in the format 11/16/2023 – so month/day/year. This will populate across.
Go through the Behaviours and Lagging Indicators, and set your actions. I’ve included some ideas, but tweak them to fit your goals.
Remember to put the time and measure.
Then each week go through and put in the number you’d done. You’ll see how well you’ve done at the bottom.
Don’t Aim for 100%
You’re never aiming for 100%. If you are hitting 100% every week, then your behaviours are too easy!
Also, this shouldn’t become something you’re anxious about. It’s a prompt, a nudge, a reminder, not a stick to beat you with.
You want to be comfortably doing 60-70% of the actions each week.