The vast majority of my work with clients has to do with the business-to-business sales approach and automating business processes. Business professionals have a certain cadence and designing your business communication and action strategies for customers around these rhythms is critical.
Here are strategies to consider around how people work and how processes should be designed accordingly.
Front Load Your Work Weeks
People are inundated Monday morning with emails and reorienting themselves after a weekend. They are ready to engage issues in the afternoon and fully on Tuesday and Wednesday.
If you are seeking collaboration or answers, get your critical communications and tasks out early to allow for correspondence the rest of the week.
By the time Friday comes around, people are mentally checked out and ready for the weekend.
If you can do a bit of planning to think through how your customers or partners work, then you can have more productive weeks which lead to productive months, quarters and years.
It takes an emphasis early in the week to front load your specific actions that need to get done. It may mean a really busy Monday and Tuesday but you will be able to get things done within this time frame. Otherwise, the weekend overtakes any well intentioned plans. And weeks can slip by pretty quickly.
Zero Out By Week’s End
I like to get my email to a zeroinbox by Thursday. It leaves room to play, connect or clean up on Friday. It brings the week to a closure and ensures any responses that are necessary have been addressed.
Furthermore, it ensures a goal date that creates urgency and motivation. Psychologically, this is powerful to create concrete goals for a great week by zeroing out.
Your cadence may differ or you may have to react to the urgent more often. But if you can focus and close the open loops then you give yourself an opportunity to breathe, create and get ahead on Fridays. Often, you can take proactive bonus steps or touch base with relationships in a more relaxed way compared to early week urgencies. These can be golden opportunities.
Touch Hearts and Minds
If you don’t have a CRM system or a way to track relationship building, then you may want to get more strategic. Good things happen when you create value.
We are all very busy, so make your communications count. This means thinking through what is valuable to your recipients. Make them pause to think. Touch their hearts with your care. Get involved and give beyond what is expected.
Those are the opportunities to connect and move the conversation or the relationship forward. It takes intentionality and observations of what people care about. Everyone is different and this means you have to tune in.
In a given week, you should be asking, “How many people did I truly bring value to and how?”
B2B interactions have a lot of cause and effect dynamics occurring. You plant seeds today that sprout weeks and months down the road. Think about hearts and minds, not just getting through your task list.
Week By Week
Weeks add up quickly. Just think back about the last month and how fast it has gone. But every day is part of this cycle and if you can tune into the right business strategies and approaches, you can accomplish more, increase revenues and grow influence.
It’s a commitment to the long game of persistence and ensuring your focus is within the rhythm of natural work for people.
There are many strategies to consider, but these thoughts have been tested, implemented and successful.
I hope it gives you that boost. It’s Tuesday, so get focused and end with a great week.
