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⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️

Today’s edition breaks down the monthly update, the second of four specific calendar appointments you need to keep with yourself to take your sales career to new heights.

Let’s go!

Read time: <7 minutes

If you missed part one, read it here.

Keeping your strategy on track

Last week, I outlined creating an effective annual strategy using the MVP framework.

Once you’re clear on your Mission, Vision, Passions, Principles, Priorities, and Projects, you can use the monthly update to stay on track. The monthly update acts as your heartbeat to ensure you’re sticking to your plan for the year and, more importantly, know how to adapt based on new information and changing dynamics around you.

Let’s dive in to see how it works!

Commitment 2: The monthly update

What is it?

This is a routine I hold sacred on my calendar one day every month where I achieve four objectives:

1. Get clean

2. Get clear

3. Get confident

4. Get inspired

I refer back to my MVP framework and have this present to make me conscious of my desired destination for the year. This helps me to refine or update it each month based on my progress thus far.

As a reminder, here’s the taxonomy of the MVP Framework based on the concept of Ikigai (your “reason for being”):

How does it work?

Step 1: Getting clean

The first step is to clean up any lingering items from the previous month. The first place to start is from the bottom of the MVP framework – Projects.

As I explained in Monday’s workshop with Make More Hustle Less Club members, I treated each account pursuit like a project when I was an active strategic seller. If I were at the end of a project, like winning the deal, I would create a detailed handover doc for the Client Partner to ensure they, and the supporting Customer Success team, had everything they needed to onboard the client.

Then, I would spend time in my CRM cleaning up all of my opportunities, ensuring all dead ones got appropriately closed/lost. I didn’t want anything in the CRM that was inaccurate or would cause unnecessary distractions, like my leaders asking for an update on a dead deal for the upcoming month.

Lastly, I would review all of my projects in flight (work and life), update the due date, and ensure each project had a clear next action on my calendar.

This part of the routine was about breathing new life and freshness into my projects and pipeline while also ensuring my calendar was cleaned up for the month ahead.

Step 2: Getting clear

The next step is to get crystal clear on what to do and who to focus on by moving up to the next level of the MVP framework – Priorities.

This is when I would go through my inboxes, sequences, event attendees, etc., and determine:

→ Who’s worth keeping?

→ Who needs a breakup?

→ Who needs to be nurtured?

→ Who needs my undivided attention?

→ Who can be asked for a referral? (so often overlooked)

Once I have these answers, I can clearly re-prioritize my projects and structure my calendar appropriately for the upcoming month. The most important actions got scheduled and time-blocked.

Step 3: Getting confident

The next step is to boost your confidence by moving to the next level of the MVP framework – Principles.

Principles act as my operating rules to ensure I am supporting my Passions. I would usually spend some time here reviewing my current Principles and ask myself a series of questions using another framework, called TEAMS:

Time

→ How much time did I work?

→ Where did I spend my time?

→ Where do I want to spend my time?

Energy

→ What gives me energy?

→ What drains my energy?

Attention

→ Who/what got the most attention, and why?

→ Who/what do I want to give more attention to, and why?

Money

→ How much revenue did I generate?

→ How much did I earn?

→ What is my hourly rate?

→ How much did I spend?

→ Where can I invest?

→ Where should I cut back?

Score

→ What is my win rate?

→ What is my average deal size?

→ What is my average deal cycle?

→ What went well?

→ What needs to improve?

I would keep a running journal of this in a trusted space I could keep organized by month, like in Notion. I would set a twenty-five-minute timer and write answers to these questions, ensuring I could do this undistracted. Then, I would take a five-minute break, step away from the computer, come back and review my work.

The goal was to stress-test my current principles or refine them if they needed it.

For example, one of my Passions was writing my way to successful deals. That meant I needed to focus on carving out deep work at specific times of the day to craft narrative memos and business cases.

A Principle I deployed was to dedicate one Pomodoro cycle each morning before checking email, logging on to Slack, or scrolling social media. With this work done, I was confident I would have a strong day.

This step ensured my Principles were supporting the work and life I wanted. If not, I wasn’t shy about changing them.

Step 4: Get inspired

The last step is to get inspired for the upcoming month by moving to the top of the MVP Framework – Mission, Vision, and Passions.

I would read over my Mission and Vision for three reasons:

1. Validate that they are still accurate

2. Evaluate how close or far I am from my target

3. Reaffirm why I’m working so hard

Then, I would shut down my computer and follow one of my Passions outside of work, like going for a bike ride.

This step is so important. Operating at the highest level means knowing when to step away from the grind and do things that reinvigorate you for another challenging month and quarter ahead.

When should you do it and how long does it take?

I like to schedule my monthly update for the first Monday of each month and spend about three hours working through it. Once I’ve completed it, I take the rest of the day to do something enjoyable.

Helpful tools

– Calendar

– CRM

– Notion (staying connected to your MVP and overall progress)

– Todoist (Managing your Projects and next actions)

Let’s put this into action together

On Monday, January 8th, from 4 – 5 PM EST, I will run a workshop walking Make More Hustle Less Club Members through the monthly update routine in full.

There are three ways to access this workshop:

1. Current MMHL Club member: Go to your hub page to get it on your calendar.

2. 7 Steps to 7 Figures reader: Add a membership.

3. Newsletter subscriber only: Sign up for the 7 Figure OS and select Option 2 or 3.

See you next week, when I will dive deep into designing the third commitment (weekly) to help you become more effective and efficient with your next actions.

Here’s how I can help you right now:

1 | Unlock the 7 Figure Seller OS

Learn how to use design and systems thinking to become a 7 figure seller. There are 3 options to allow you to customize your learning journey.

2 | Download The 7 Figure Open Letter

Get the creative strategic selling strategy that landed a $5.9M deal with a top 4 major global airline. Bonus inside!

3 | Book a 1:1 coaching session right now

You can book a 60-minute coaching session with me (although the Pro above option provides access to 1:1 coaching with me at a 70% discount. Note, just a handful of available coaching slots remain for 2023).