Success happens when you combine habits with accountability

Success. 

In the last two posts, I talked about Disciplines as the paths to the goal. They are the means used to achieve business growth. Picking the right things to do puts you on the path to achieving your goals.

Habits are the regular behaviors that enable the disciplines you follow to succeed.

Habits are the steps to stay on the path of the discipline. Habits are your settled or regular tendencies or practices, whether personally or as a company, good or bad.

Results happen when you combine disciplines and habits with accountability.

 We all know the feeling of frustration when starting a new exercise regimen or healthy eating plan (the disciplines), and you maintain good habits (eating according to plan or exercising regularly) but not seeing results.

 The same happens with your marketing or sales initiatives.

Are you focusing on the goals - more leads, more sales (analogous to losing weight or getting stronger) - or are you focusing on the behaviors/habits that lead to those goals?

Too often, we only reward the achievement of the goal and not the habits or steps required to reach it.

The plateau between the start and the success is the land where goals go to die.

Why? We focus on the outcome and not the habits that lead to the outcome.

Nick Saban would say his team focuses on the process of what it takes to play winning football and not on the wins themselves. Winning is the result of creating good habits within the discipline of fundamental football. He doesn't say win the game; he says to perform the habits you have been taught and practiced, and the result will take care of itself.

From a marketing perspective, instead of focusing on the lead numbers, you might reward the habit of:

• regularly creating customer-focused content like blog posts you created
• sharing helpful info on social media
• building new website pages that improve the customer's ability to answer a question they have or common self-service issues
• monitoring the details of technical SEO, so your site performs at a high level at all times
• un-gating content so more people can see and share it
• obsessing over onboarding new followers and email list subscribers to make the process interesting, engaging, and amazing
• replying to all comments - good or bad - on all social media platforms

From a sales point of view, do you encourage the habits that lead to sales like:

• proactively calling prospects and sharing valuable information
• following up all outstanding quotes
• following up call all lost business
• regularly contacting existing customers, share helpful info, and ask them how they are doing
• asking questions and documenting the answers for other sales team members and for marketing to use for content
• allowing your salespeople to build their brand and create connections and content that attract prospects

The point is that leads and sales don't just appear because of some magic campaign or a one-time event. They show up because your teams build the day-in-day-out habits that lead to success.

Creating habits within the right disciplines is the key to business growth.