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Business Rule #40:
Work Smarter, Not Harder
November 24, 2005
by Caroline Pfouts
”The harder I work, the luckier I get.” Samuel Goldwyn.
There’s no substitute for hard work. It only makes sense that the more you strive to reach a goal, the more likely you are to achieve it.
But there are limits. Everyone gets the same 24 hours in a day. Which is why hard work is not enough. You have to be smart about where you spend your time, money, and other resources. That was the real test in this week’s task, to get as many people as possible to call an 800 number to request a sample of “Shania,” Shania Twain’s new signature fragrance from Stetson.
To help, the teams were given $10,000 and advertising “wrappers,” self-adhesive posters that can be attached to nearly anything.
This time out, Randal Pinkett was the project manager for Excel, meaning really he was leading just Rebecca Jarvis. Since Capital Edge had three remaining team members, Randal quickly saw that staffing was going to be vital and ordered sixty temps for the day, split evenly between two different staffing agencies. Smart move. If one supplier fell through, they would still have an adequate-sized staff from the other.
Randal and Rebecca allocated their staff to different parts of Manhattan, effectively covering most of the island. They also decided it was good idea to send some of their Hispanic crew to cover Spanish Harlem. Definitely working smart. As for the wrappers, Excel also used them on the side of a van to reinforce the message their sales force took to the street.
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On the Capital Edge team, the focus was on the wrappers. As Project Manager, Alla Wartenberg should have done a better job on analyzing the task and allocating their resources. The wrappers were really a supplement to what was, at its core, a street-selling task.
Adam Israelov came up with the idea of putting the wrappers on horse-drawn carriages in Central Park. He was looking for something that would make for a good “spectacle.” Wanting to do something to get people talking may have been a good impulse, but it was off track. Once the event began, the teams had only four hours to get people to call in. To succeed, Capital Edge had to get people to pick up the phone immediately and request a sample. Seeing a poster in an unexpected place was hardly going to do the trick.
Alla should have taken Adam’s idea as merely one suggestion and continued brainstorming on how they were going to get people to call. Unfortunately, she instead allowed a majority of their budget to be spent on a contract with the carriage company, leaving barely enough money to hire fifteen people to canvas the street wearing ad-wrapped placards.
When I teach sales workshops, I always focus on setting goals. Deciding what you want is absolutely critical to achieving it. One of the surest ways to reach a goal is to start with an image in mind of the desired outcome and work backwards from there. For example, if the goal is saving $50,000 for the kid’s college fund, it can very well seem overwhelming. However, breaking it down into a ten-year plan, it’s only about $100 per week, not allowing for any return earned on the savings. $100 per week suddenly begins to look like a manageable savings plan, compared to a lump sum of $50,000.
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You have to be smart about where you spend your time, money, and other resources.
