If you need to create 4 opportunities a month, each one worth $75,000, to be able to make your number. If you don’t create those opportunities, you need 8 opportunities the next month. If you do better work the next month and put up two new opportunities worth $75,000 each, you are now carrying forward 6 opportunities into the very next month—in addition to the 4 you need to create to cover the month you’re in.
Math doesn’t care if you don’t really like prospecting, the creation of new opportunities. It doesn’t care if you don’t believe that you should have to cold call, nor does it care that marketing didn’t give you the leads you believe you need. Math does what it does.
Math also doesn’t care if you are lazy. It doesn’t care that you aren’t willing to exercise the self-discipline necessary to manage yourself. Nor is it concerned that you like to be entertained, and that you love the novelty provided by the small screen of infinite distractions. Math works even if you don’t.
Math doesn’t care that you had every intention of doing good work, and that you really need to do well in your role. It isn’t even aware that you have any feelings whatsoever, good, bad, or indifferent. Math certainly doesn’t have any feelings.
It doesn’t care about your manager, the President, your irrational competitor, your equally irrational prospective client, your product challenges, or the fact that the Internet is disintermediating your industry. Math just goes right on being math, neutral in all issues, punishing some and rewarding others.
If it is difficult to create 4 opportunities in a month, then it isn’t any easier to create 10 in that same number of days.