Hi guys,
Here’s today’s time – and I want to focus today around motivation – because of several setbacks I suffered after my conversation with Craig Campbellon Friday morning.
Let’s go through it.
Basically, we looked at the traffic growth for THIS blog – www.deepakshukla.com/blog and quickly realised that as I’ve been producing content – to the tune of over 150,000 words – my traffic has actually dropped.
It’s like the content I’m writing is having the reverse effect upon my attempts to rank on Google.
This was a crushing realisation that came out of our conversation and one that’s set me back over the last 2-days so I want to go through my insights into how to stay motivated in sales and life when something sets you back:
Table of Contents
Motivational Sales Tip 1: Accept that motivation waxes and wanes
Even without Craig making his comments, if I look back at the last 52 days of my content journey – it’s clear to see that I have moments of high motivation and moments where it’s low.
So seeing motivation in life should be recognised as a temporary impulse more than anything else – that is to be renewed every day.
Motivational Sales Tip 2: Don’t let other people’s criticisms stop you in your journey
Craig had several comments about why the content I’m producing isn’t working – particularly in regards to its internal linking structure (i.e how many times one blog will link to another) and said it basically doesn’t exist.
He then also ran one or two of my blogs through page optimizer pro and saw reams of room for improvement.
This is what he pointed out as being the main issues with my content.
Motivational Sales Tip 3: When you feel a lack of motivation – take some time to recover
When Craig said those things to me, and my heart sank a little – I ended up taking the next couple of days off from writing content because it was obvious to me I didn’t feel like writing anything at all.
So I used this space as my recovery time to get distance from that wretched feeling so I could then make my next move.
Motivational Sales Tip 4: When something isn’t working – fix that and it’ll improve your motivation ultimately
Craig’s comments were actually good – I passed on the message to my internal team that as they edit my content they need to add internal links.
Furthermore, it became clear that I need to go back through my old content and start optimizing it based on its target keyword.
So I discussed the idea of writing for 20 days a month and then improving old content for 10 days.
Today is the 22nd, so in theory, it would be an ideal time to start looking over old content, and this is something that I intend to look at over the next 3-5 days.
Motivational Sales Tip 5: Write Down Your Thoughts and Feelings
So in a way, that’s what I’m doing right now with the writing of this blog post. I’m using this as a vehicle of expression to get out the feelings I have onto paper.
It’s a powerful therapeutic process – and you need to find a process that works to allow you to ‘vent’ and literally ‘process’ i.e become accepting of what was said and choose to move past it/how to take action as a result of it.
Motivational Sales Tip 6: Don’t Stop Moving Forward
So that’s what this blog is a sign of. Whilst my progress definitely slowed over the weekend – it’s not the case that I’ve stopped completely.
If you get setbacks by people, or internally when it comes to progress, and your motivation in life, and in sales dips – then you’re not going to cover the distances you need to to be successful – so really keep this in mind.
Motivational Sales Tip 7: Set Yourself Specific Overall Goals
So for me, one of my specific overall goals I’m always reaching towards is to try and write one blog post per day.
It’s a pretty ambitious goal as the aim is to try and do that literally every single day – but when it comes to your sales calls (e.g make 10 sales calls per day, every day without fail) – it’s important to do the same thing.
Motivational Sales Tip 8: Set Yourself Micro-Specific Goals As Well
When you go through a period of low motivation – it’s important to have a strategy in place as well.
That might be – today my motivation is low so I just want to make ONE phone call and that’s it.
In my case, the goal was, was to find some means of expressing my feelings over what was discussed and to hopefully turn it into some kind of content.
If it isn’t completely optimized for SEO – that’s ok – because that’s something I can work towards
Motivational Sales Tip 9: Make Sure You Have A Powerful Why
So none of this is going to work if the why isn’t big enough for you.
For Craig – he writes content with the express purpose of ranking well on Google. This is definitely a big driver for him.
For myself, my why, is that writing each morning is something like (as discussed) a therapeutic process for me.
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Being a literature graduate – creative writing is something that has been part of me since I was 14 years old and started writing rap lyrics.
20 years later and here I am still producing content on a daily basis.
When I write each morning I have a much greater sense of internal balance – and that’s something that keeps me writing each day.
Naturally, I’d also like to rank this content on Google – so I’m trying to find the happy medium between writing for myself and writing for an audience. 😛
What’s your why?
It needs to be greater than any type of criticism that you receive – otherwise, in the face of criticism – you’re just going to get knocked down.
One of the things that Craig spoke about – is that he’s going to go through a content cull on his website – and maybe remove 200+ blogs – because it’s not supporting his traffic journey.
In my instance – these words represent a diary over time and so even if none of them ever ended up ranking – it’s content that I never intend to delete.
Motivational Sales Tip 10: Track Your Activity To Keep Your Motivation High
I know last year I wrote something in the region of 320,000 words. And I did that in really 6-8 months.
We’re now 52 days into the year and I’m perhaps already 80,000 words in.
That keeps my motivation high.
I don’t want to stop until I reach 400,000 words.
Tracking your activity is an excellent way to reward yourself when you feel ‘low’ or ‘down’ – because it can be the case that you can see ‘wow since Jan 1st I’ve made 1,113 cold calls – and last year I made 8,245 cold calls.
Numbers like this can motivate you and keep you going when your motivation isn’t where it should be.
Motivational Sales Tip 11: Track Micro Results As Well
So you might have noticed that I often talk about dates, I screenshot the actual start and finish time of writing, as well as the actual word count.
I’m not sure of how many writers actually do that.
I do that for myself because it’s a way of gamifying the whole process of writing.
I look at the start and finish time as well as the number of words written and think to myself well how can I do even better next time?
I’m pretty sure this happens at a subconscious level because I just see the date/wordcount and I feel rushes of motivation and keep on writing.
Do the same with yourself – measure the macro and the micro.
Motivational Sales Tip 12: Engage In Fantasising/Dreaming Of Success
This one’s interesting. I have multiple ways of fantasising about success that will come from this content journey that keep me motivated.
Several times a day I’ll go to my blog and scroll through the titles of the content I’ve written in glee as I look at the body of content I’ve produced and imagine someone else telling me that they got lost in my blog for hours.
I’ll randomly open up some of my blog content and look at the ‘reading time’ of 5/7/10/12 minutes and think – wow I’ve written a decent piece of content.
I’ll also have daydreams of someone asking me for my advice on something and being able to point them in the direction of something that I’ve written.
Even now with talented people that join the placement programme, I point them in the direction of the placement programme and pearl lemon story to give them some background on how everything started.
I’d recommend finding your way of doing the same thing with your cold calls, and indeed anything that you’re working on to keep your motivation high.
Motivational Sales Tip 13: Create rewards/incentives for yourself
If you hit a certain benchmark – then it’s really important you celebrate that moment. For me – that benchmark is getting to March 31st 2021 and to still be writing.
That’ll mean I’ve been writing, or rather attempting to write content for 90 days in a row.
In reality, I’ll have probably written for 80 of those 90 days and will perhaps have finished 70-75 blog posts.
And for me, that’ll represent a massive period of achievement – of my most consistent feat of writing for one publication.
Motivational Sales Tip 14: Procrastination Is Different From Needing Some Time Out
So there’ll be moments with cold calling and in my case writing daily, where I’ll experience burnout.
You’ll feel a tired feeling with the work you’re doing, and feel really sick of it.
That’s when it’s important to take mini-breaks from your work.
This will allow you some important time out to work up the energy to ‘go again’.
Trying to keep writing or to keep making cold calls when you are fed up – isn’t a sound strategy to pursue.
In those instances, it really is better if instead you just take some time off until that feeling dissipates – and then come at the cold call or content production slowly and gently again.
You’ll then get back into your stride before you know it.
Procrastination, however – is a different thing.
That’s when you know something needs to be done, and you keep finding ways to avoid doing it, to avoid putting the work in.
You might end up sitting at your laptop and not writing anything of note for 30 minutes, or maybe 30 minutes goes by and you still haven’t made a single cold call.
That’s the stuff that’s deadly – and that’s the stuff you need to avoid doing.
Motivational Sales Tip 15: Read Motivational Literature
Whether it’s Zig Ziglar and his sales books, Les Brown, Brian Tracy – I find reading sales advice books and motivational literature to be extremely powerful in keeping your motivation high.
So when things happen and the motivation dips – then you can turn to the greats and see what they have to say to top up the motivation tank.
Find your favourite motivational speaker or sales speaker – and grab one of their books today.
Grant Cardone is another good one I recommend.
Motivational Sales Tip 16: Be Your Own Internal Sales And Motivational Coach
It’s vital that you engage in constructive self-talk and not just critical self-talk.
It’s very easy to let other people’s comments and criticisms to get you down – and if you focus too heavily on this then it’ll get in the way of your motivation.
What that would mean for me is that come today (i.e a Monday when I wrote this) – I’d still not be writing anything at all after Craig’s comments about my blog.
However, you need to be able to coach yourself internally as well and take inspired action when your motivation dips – even if you don’t feel like it.
For me, what I did when Craig was laying into me was immediately send a voice note to my head of SEO with Craig’s comments – to remind my head of internal operations to embed my YouTube videos into my blog…
And then take a little bit of time out – and then come back and process my thoughts further in the form of this (what is) a motivational blog that I’ve written for myself – and hopefully you as well 🙂
Motivational Sales Tip 17: Create A Support Network Around You
This can be other sales professionals who are also in the trenches with you – this can be a coach, your team.
The people are your choice – but riding this journey out with others is something I highly recommend.
In my instance, there’s an expectation within my team that I’m writing a daily keyword-optimized blog and that they’ll go out and rank it on google.
This is, therefore, an expectation I need to meet and one that helps me drive forward – these support networks are also external dependencies because I want to do well for the people who are cheering me on.
Motivational Sales Tip 18: Motivation Is Also Intrinsic – And You Probably Have That Anyway
If you’re reading this blog post – I’d wager you already have a decent level of motivation – because why else would you be here in the first place?
This is something that you should remind yourself in those moments when your motivation for sales or life might dip.
Statistically speaking – you’re likely to bounce back – based upon the truth that you’re self-motivated!
The activity might change – but your motivation will definitely remain intact
Final Thoughts On Sales And Life Motivation
When I look back at what I’ve written and think about what are the most powerful elements for me – it’s this:
In writing, I’m doing something I love – and then around this, I’m constructing ways to keep me motivated, to take on board constructive criticism and action it, as well as to create multiple internal mechanisms (like fantasies of success and rewards and tracking of results) to keep me moving forward.
If you’re reading this because you’re struggling to make the next cold call, or you feel low…
Well, just know you’re not alone, it happens to all of us and I’m here writing this for you so you can at least take away some small insights for your own motivational journey as you too move forward.
Good luck – I KNOW you can make it.
And here’s today’s wordcount:
And here’s today’s finish time:
