Planning to Fail
No I’m not going to rehash the old line “If you fail to plan you plan to fail” or its derivatives. That would be too easy. We all know that you have to have a plan to guide you in some manner. You don’t have to be an anal retentive OCD person and plan everything every day, but you have to have a goal or target you are aiming for and a plan on how to achieve that.
Just having a plan though isn’t good enough. I personally have made many plans, most of which never got past the first step. I’m sure you have as well. Implementing the plan is the real important bit. It is super easy to get caught up in making the perfect plan and never actually start doing things. Besides as the great philosopher Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”
This is one of the things that I love about the Agile Software movement and the way that we build software at Integrum. Agile believers believe that the best way to build software is to get the requirements at the last responsible moment. This way rather than doing the old school 800 page spec document for two years, you just start building the first part.
In sales it is easy to get caught up in making sure that you have the perfect product presentation or have the perfect close ready to throw at any objection. But if you don’t pick up the phone and set the appointment first, none of that matters.
