Why Email Kills Your Sales

Bing! Buzz. Rattle. Another email, another distraction away from what's important. Oh look, Joseph A. Banks is having another sale!!

Focus is key to success in building a business. Every buzz is a distraction from you doing what's most important to achieving your goals right now.

It may seem like reading and responding to every email is a necessary work responsibility, but it is not. Do you often go home and say to yourself, what the hell did I accomplish today? John Wooden said, never confuse activity with achievement.

In growing a business it's ever more important to have focus on your top priorities.  Here are 3 steps (behaviors) to staying focused:

1. Turn off every notification:   phone buzz, email notification, everything. Any distraction will cause a task to take 40% longer...assuming it ever gets done.
2. Limit email to 3 checks a day.
3. Use rules in Outlook or other mail providers to auto file or delete messages.  If you regularly get statements or invoices sent to you, have them auto-forward to the person in your business that handles those things.  Emails from your biggest client could be auto--filled into a "Hot" folder.  Rules can be set up with many variables like, who sent it, topics, containing specific words, etc.  Get creative to direct your in-box and minimize clutter. 

Not every email needs immediate attention.  Know what your daily and long-term goals are so you can successfully achieve them without being taken "off-course."

~Mark McGraw