A Social Business Needs … Weapons of Mass Production

Articles, Social Selling

This is a tale of productivity. Your productivity. And, before we even get started, never confuse activity with productivity. The Three Stooges were a flurry of activity. The key to being a productive Social Business today combines your mindset with old-school and new-school tools and techniques. Ultimately, it is about making the best possible use of your most finite commodity … time.

Mindset

Highly productive people tend to share a number of common traits:

  • They have a high sense of urgency – If they are on-time, they are running late.
  • They like to get ahead and stay ahead – Staying ahead of schedule provides a number of great benefits: you will likely be exceeding other’s expectations; when a fire unexpectedly starts up, you will have the time to find a hose; and if an opportunity presents itself, you will be in a position to secure it!
  • They squeeze every ounce of available time and can make good use of traditional downtime. I’m watching Fox News and writing this on my iPad using Google Drive[Tweet “Being a productive social business means that you need to have the tools!”]

Old-school

Old-school techniques involve little to no technology. Electronic is not always better …

  • To-do lists – My paper to-do list looks out thirteen days days and I can always grab something to do if needed. I rewrite it every two to three days. Why not a full two weeks? Paper size. I might add that, while there are a ton of great productivity apps that are available out there, my affinity for paper oddly seems to be shared by many hyper-successful people. We must like crossing things off.
  • They are constantly planning, evaluating and adjusting that plan when necessary, and finally executing their plan. Moreover, they finish each day by planning for the next.

If setting aside four or five fifteen to thirty minute time slots each day to focus on these tasks might work best for you, give it a try as many people have successfully adopted this plan and they swear by it..

New-school

There are a ton of great tools that are available and there are at the very least free versions of all of those listed below!

  • Evernote – Great for taking and organizing your notes. The web clipper for Chrome is awesome!
  • Google Drive and Dropbox – These services can also be used to collaborate and chat on files.
  • Readers – I like Feedly for keeping up on all of the latest and it makes social sharing a snap!
  • Social sharing tools – You can’t go wrong with Buffer and Hootsuite and both will allow you to schedule your campaigns over the weekend.
  • Track how you spend your time using Toggl or … are you afraid of what you might find out:

Things that you might spend more time on now can very easily return dividends in excess of that time spent in the future. Ultimately, there is no great secret to becoming awesomely productive. You have a plan and you work that plan consistently. Pretty simple.

 

Craig M. Jamieson

Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services
Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!
Craig M. Jamieson

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