My life has been, at times, like the Seinfeld rerun about being lost in the parking garage and not remembering where they parked. The ultimate time for me was in the Providence airport parking lot after a long weekend of baseball games and family time in Baltimore. I have the auto doorlock remote but it seems that the battery is always low when you're in need of a horn honk from afar to help figure out location.
Anyone who is in this situation regularly has learned to either focus or write it down. There are a lot of ways to focus; as a moment in time, as a picture (for all of us visual learners) or as mentioned, in the written form - writing the location of your car down! After many airport trips and remote meetings I learned to make both a mental note and a written one - between the two, I've never forgotten where I've parked since.
It's no different in business. You can not improve what you don't measure, so you have to take time to focus on the important revenue milestones, activity milestones, and goals that you have. I always tell people that I simply coach others on the shape of their pipeline. How simplistic, but here's the catch. It's not about being complex, it's all about the focus. How many small biz owners do you know - including yourself - who coach themselves or their team on the shape of their activity pipeline? We'll talk more about the pipeline this week.
