Friday, 18 January 2013

Are You Doing Enough IPA?


Cast your mind back a few days...

You started back at your desk after the Christmas break 100% recharged and ready for action. “Increasing Sales” as your full intent.  
You were ready to concentrate on the big stuff and not get bogged down in detail. You'd made some lofty 2013 goals and were ready to conquer the world.
Then reality took over.
Too many emails. Too many projects. Too much work - not enough time.
No doubt about it, choosing work priorities over a given day, week, month can be challenging. 
Let me introduce you to a couple of concepts that really help me and I think they'll help you too.
1)   "Income...Producing...Activity" (IPA)

I'll define IPA in a moment but firstly I suggest you should be doing IPA for an average of a
least 1- 3 hours per day. If you're serious about generating tomorrow's sales, and the next day 
and beyond, ring fence that time in your diary.
IPA - activities that have a direct impact on creating sales opportunities. By this I mean sales and promotional activity prior to a sale being made. This could be prospect meetings, creating email campaigns, generating referrals... anything that starts or develops new relationships with prospective customers. 
What you do with your client after the deal has been done is around customer service and quality... and is not IPA. 
How much of your time is actually spent on IPA? Go on - be honest. 
1)   "Fastest...Business...Impact" (FBI)
Many years ago I came across the acronym FBI and I have used it ever since. It's simple - and
very effective.
When I've chosen my IPA for any given period, I usually go on to challenge myself and ask "what's the FBI here"? What's going to have the FastestBusiness Impact on my business? 
This really helps me prioritise what's going to create the biggest impact on my sales... then I do that first. 
When I've completed that activity I ask myself again and do the next most important activity. The concept is that simple. But many many people I meet don't apply it - It's just so easy to get caught up with doing stuff that doesn't create sales for you... especially when you're busy.
So - keep checking in if you want your sales success...


"Am I doing enough IPA"
"What's the FBI"
Until next time...
Leigh


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