The modern sales and marketing environment is so fast-paced that we often find ourselves reacting almost on instinct. There are deadlines to make, delays to overcome, stakeholders to please and more for you to worry about. And at the same time as this, the world keeps spinning and the ever-hungry content machines of corporate blogs and social networking sites need feeding.
This can cause a problem, because it leaves us working on autopilot, hopping from deadline to deadline in an attempt to put fires out or to get things done at the last minute. And when we’re doing this, our productivity and our efficiency inevitably suffer, whether we’re talking about marketers pulling campaigns together the day before they launch or whether we’re talking about sales teams struggling to make their quotas at the end of the month.
The result of all of this is a lot of time being wasted, whether it’s because we’re spending it in the wrong places or whether we’re spending it in the right places but not getting the results we could be getting because we’re rushing things and making mistakes. We can solve the latter by working on projects ahead of time instead of delaying them until we can’t delay them anymore. But solving the former requires a little more thought.
Taking a step away
There’s a reason why so many companies have corporate away days and hold brainstorming sessions away from the office. By taking yourself away from the daily grind and putting yourself in a different environment, you can take a step away from all of the little stuff that fills your day so you can focus on the big picture.
People are busy, but nobody’s so busy that they’re completely indispensable. Everyone can find some time to block off in their calendar, even if it’s just for a couple of days. And while it might not seem like the best use of your time, you’ll almost certainly save more time that you spend by finding ways to improve your workflow or by cutting out some of those little daily jobs that take up a lot of time and don’t make any difference.
Taking some time out like this can also stop you from getting overwhelmed, falling behind and having to deal with things at the last minute. In business, by the time that you realise you have a problem, it’s already too late. If you want to be the best you can be, you need to plan ahead, anticipate problems and deal with them, and the only way to do that is to take some time out from dealing with the little things so you can work on the big stuff.
Conclusion
Remember that delegation is an option too, and it’s likely that much of the work that you’re doing can be passed on to a more junior employee. It’s a good idea to make this a regular practice because this also allows you to promote from within instead of spending huge amounts of time trying to recruit new employees. Working with an agency can help too, which is where we come in.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.