Let’s assume your goal is to make more money. If your focus is on making more money, the input might be for you to do everything in your power to acquire more money, followed by behaviors that repel money from you. Money is an output that is generated by the input that is “creating value for other people.” Those who try to increase the amount of money they have without creating value for others struggle to acquire it, or worse, doing things that are illegal, immoral, or both.
Maybe you want to meet your goals, your sales quota. If your focus is on getting people to do what you want, when you want, you are going to struggle to meet your numbers. A quota is an output only delivered by serving your clients where they are and by helping your contacts have the conversations they need to move forward with the change you are recommending. (See The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales, my second book). When the input is skipping stages to get a close faster, you find that outcome moving away from you the harder you push.
No more pushy sales tactics. The Lost Art of Closing shows you how to proactively lead your customer and close your sales.
You need more prospects. You need a bigger, healthier pipeline of opportunities. You might spend your time on social sites, pitching strangers who connect with you and leaving comments on posts as a way to get attention. You might also rely on your marketing department to generate leads for you. When the input isn’t enough to generate the output, you have to change the input, in this case with proactive, targeted outreach, and strategies that result in the acquisition of new opportunities.
If you want to accelerate the time it takes you to produce some result, you first have to ensure that the inputs, your strategies, your actions, and your energy are appropriate to the output. You will not obtain any outcome with inputs that are not correct or sufficient to produce them. However, there is good news; everything you need to know to deliver the results you want is already known, documented, and readily available for you—should you be willing to do the work.
