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In this video, we are going to talk about probably the most powerful way to hold yourself accountable for getting better at business development and do the things you need to do in the short term to be successful in the long term.
Business development is an interesting craft because it is something that can easily be put off. The rewards are far down the road, sometimes a year or two out in front of yourself. It is easy to kick the can down the road and not do the things you need to do today to be successful in the long-term.
What does that sound like? It sounds like exercise and being in great shape.
A couple months ago, I find myself at 9:00 a.m. in 30-degree weather. It is windy as heck, and I was doing a track workout with a couple of friends. And I was actually enjoying it! This really struck me because I was tired the night before. I did not get a lot of sleep, and here I was at 9:00 a.m., excited to be there and to be doing 200-meter sprints over and over again until I felt like I was going to fall over.
Why was that? It is because I had an accountability group.
We have a group of four people, myself included. We call ourselves “The Underdogs.” We meet almost every Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. We go through a specific routine because we are all gearing up for various Ultimate Frisbee tournaments. Some of us compete at the national level and some of us compete at the world level, and none of us want to look bad. We want to be in great shape, and we want to perform well.
So, we meet every Saturday morning at 9:00. We have adopted different roles in the group. A guy named DK is our technical guy. He likes putting the workouts together. A guy named Dawson is really great at motivation. He is always shouting out our times, and he is really fast, so you want to try to be as fast as Dawson. A gal named MJ is sort of our spiritual leader. She keeps us on task and tells us what we need to hear even when we do not want to hear it. She is a great coach. I am not sure what my role is for the group, but I really love doing it.
My workout accountability group is really powerful because, number one, our default switch is on. We are going to meet at 9:00 a.m. at a specific track every Saturday morning. We have to text each other if we are not going to show up. Setting that default switch on is really powerful.
The second thing that is powerful about the accountability group is everybody has roles. We know what those are, and we are striving to get better in that workout.
The third thing that is really powerful is that we have a group text set up. We text each other throughout the week as we do workouts. Then we can cheer each other on, or gently nudge somebody that has not texted in a while to make sure they are doing what they need to do in-between our sessions.
Here is how you can apply these things to business development.
Find somebody that is at the same place you are in their approach to business development. Someone who is trying to learn similar things. It does not even have to be someone in the same industry, just somebody that you think can share the same methodology. Maybe you both have gone through our GrowBIG Training, share the same methodology, or talk the same language. Here is the key. That other person or persons, they have to be comfortable getting in your grille if you do not do what you need to do.
Once you get a group of people together, you might even set different roles for everyone, like we have with our workout group. Maybe somebody is the technical expert. Maybe somebody is the one that is cheering everybody on. Maybe somebody else is the creative strategist. Whatever your roles are, you can define those and then start acting those out, and when you see something that needs to be fixed, you go to the right person.
The last piece is critical. Pick a time that you are going to meet, either virtually or in person, and put that default switch on. We are going to meet at 7:00 a.m. at this coffee shop every Friday and, in between the meetings, I am going to send you my data. Here is what I worked on this week. Here are my leading and lagging indicators. Here are the results I am getting. Then that person is either cheering you on if you did what you needed to do, or they are in your grille if you are not doing what you need to do.
We find that by having that sequence of events, where the default switch is on, where you are meeting on a very periodic cadence. And you are never letting each other down. Then all of a sudden, a month has gone by, or a quarter has gone by, or a year has gone by, and you have all accomplished more than you ever thought you could. All because of the mechanism of accountability.
Try to think of who you can pair with. Who is your perfect team? Who would not be afraid to get in your grille if you need a little bit of tough love? Get that group together, set a general framework, write it down on a one-pager, get agreement on what you are all going to do, and what you are not going to do, and start executing an accountability group. You will be blown away by the results.
As with all our videos, we hope this one helps you help your clients succeed.