How to Finish What You Start

Every day, you want to do better. You might even set specific intentions to prospect more often and close more deals. Yet you never seem to be able to finish what you start. Why?

Sometimes a lack of follow-through is due to external forces you can’t control. More often than not, however, the problem is actually internal.

According to consultant Pete Greider and clinical psychologist Dr. Steven Levinson, authors of Following Through: A Revolutionary New Model for Finishing Whatever You Start, salespeople frequently fail to follow through with their positive plans for improvement. That’s because willpower and self-discipline are usually not enough to help us change our behavior.

Instead of relying on self-discipline or willpower, here are four tips to help you finish what you start (for real this time).

Tip #1: Make sure your motivating factors pack a powerful punch.
Motivating yourself to work late because you want a raise in three months is a great goal – but it’s probably not powerful enough to overcome the daily desire to leave the office early on a Friday afternoon.

To create compelling reasons that will spur you to action, Greider advises considering less logical but more powerful motivators. According to him, “compelling reasons” are immediate, certain, and personal, while the “right reasons” tend to be logical and long-term but have very little immediate impact.

Greider illustrates his point with the story of a salesperson who, for years, failed to follow through on his resolution to get up at 5:15 in the morning to study technical material. The salesperson, who had two very young children, had great logical reasons for getting up to study, but he failed until he created a truly compelling reason for himself. He decided to set one alarm clock in his bedroom for 5:12 a.m. and another one in the kids’ room for 5:15 a.m. When the alarm went off in his room, he would have a compelling reason to get up immediately: to go to his children’s room and turn off the second alarm clock before it rang and woke them up. “Once he set up a compelling reason that made him feel like doing the right thing, he didn’t have to rely on willpower anymore,” Greider says.

Tip #2: Figure out when you’ve been highly motivated in the past.
Write down the times in your life when you’ve consistently followed through. Then, write down what motivated you to achieve that level of follow-through. For example, let’s say that, last quarter, you were really motivated to put in extra hours. The reason was that you strongly wanted to outsell another salesperson on your team. See if you can use that knowledge to create new compelling reasons to follow through on other intentions.

Tip #3: Tackle the easy parts first.
Every intention has an easy part and a hard part. Tackle the easy part first, and you’ll build momentum to sustain you through the difficult part.

You can use this method for cleaning up your office, for example. Tell yourself, “I have to spend only five minutes cleaning up my office, and if I want to stop then, I can.” Often that five minutes will turn into 30 minutes. By the time you really want to stop, you might find that you’ve made a big dent in the job or finished it completely.

Tip #4: Take full advantage of the moments when you feel inspired to move mountains.
An uplifting speech or an inspiring passage from a book can put you in a motivated mood, but Greider points out that moods inevitably swing, and you have to take action when you feel like it to help you follow through when you don’t.

“When you’re inspired to set something in place, take action immediately so that when the inspiration fades, you still follow through. Strike while the iron is hot instead of thinking that you’re super motivated mood will last, because it probably won’t.”