Time Management: The Rule Of 24
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The document discusses the "Rule of 24!" which is a method for improving productivity by focusing on completing tasks within 24 hours. Some key aspects of the Rule of 24! include brainstorming ways to compress timelines for projects, identifying the top time wasters, and developing strategies to get important tasks done more quickly. Applying techniques such as prioritizing tasks, practicing good time management, and focusing on the most important items can help one stay on track and get more accomplished within 24 hour periods.
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Time Management: The Rule Of 24
- 2. AGENDA • Video • The Rule of 24! defined • Brainstorm • Raceway game • Ten ways Rule of 24! helps you • Put the Rule of 24! to work
- 4. It’s about going from this...
- 5. …to this!
- 6. Work to a deadline. Make it 24 hours.
- 7. “Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.” - Ken Blanchard
- 8. “Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.” - Ken Blanchard
- 9. BrainstormmrotsniarB Identify the top 3 “timestretchers” for your gap. Develop 1 clever way to compress the gap.
- 11. Ten ways Rule of 24! helps you
- 12. S p e e d! is our best marketing tool
- 14. Jump the Queue!
- 18. A light at the end of the tunnel is good…
- 19. …and a short tunnel is even better.
- 21. Work Life Balance. • • When you prioritize and control your calendar you get more done in less time. And your mind doesn’t take home lingering unfinished business. You can focus on what matters most – family.
- 22. “Learn ya to be TM lazy.”
- 23. Put the Rule of 24! to work
- 24. Plan every day in advance.
- 26. Apply the 80/20 rule to everything.
- 27. Take it one oil barrel at a time.
- 29. Plan to do paperwork every day…
- 31. Prospect a little bit every week.
- 32. Eat the frog!
- 34. There will never be enough time to get everything done. But there will always be enough time to get the most important things done.
- 35. “You can’t be a winner if you’re a whiner, wiener.” - Jeffrey Gitomer
- 36. “You can’t be a winner if you’re a whiner, wiener.” - Jeffrey Gitomer
- 37. Or at least get a proper membership card.
- 38. Be wary of
- 40. Make it easy to focus. Clean off your desk every night.
- 41. Get a next step.
- 42. Sell them the chain a link at a time.
- 45. Go pick it up!
- 47. Study credits…
- 50. Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- <number> We going to give you one slide to explain what it means, 10 slides to show you why you should even care, and 36 slides of useful tips on how to make it work for you.
- Hand out laminated copies of the work-flow “time gap” model.
- 24 HOUR RULE. Any time action is required, give yourself only 24 hours to get it done. PROCRASTINATION SCIENCE. Nothing motivates human beings like a looming deadline. We are all, at heart, natural procrastinators. To move an item up your to-do list urgency scale, self-impose an artificial deadline. TODAY’S MISSION: Let’s collaborate to find ways to squeeze the fat out of our processes. Let’s wrestle with the “time gaps” between CREM steps and find ways to shorten them. After the brainstorming exercise we are going to play an interesting (yet educational) RC car racing game for real prizes. We will gather all the ideas today and meet again to turn them into action. AMUSING ANECDOTE.This very workshop, which is ultimately about time management is something I’ve been ‘planning’ to do for almost three months. But when Stephane scheduled delivery for December 9th it raced to the very top of my to-do list. Other things got moved out of the way to make time to prepare. Nothing crystallises your focus like a drop-dead date!
- DUAL MESSAGES. Many of the slides today have a not-so-well-hidden second message highlighted in red. Sometimes the red messages carry a slightly different meaning then the black. Observe….
- AND HERE’S WHY RULE OF 24! MATTERS…We need to blow our prospects, influencers and clients away. Speed is the single best tool to do that in our business. Clients have given up expecting it. When we begin consistently doing it, they will reward us with additional business. CONSISTENCY IS KEY. Ken Blanchard, in Raving Fans, says you have to create a system to ensure that you are fast 100% of the time. You can’t just be pretty good most of the time and occasionally blow them away. You have to earn trust by demonstrating that you always provide lightning fast response. Turning each step of the process around in 24 hours is the system.
- INSTRUCTIONS. Put everyone in workout groups. Their mission is to work on the gap assigned to them, for example, getting from the last meeting with the prospect to having a duly authorized term sheet. They have to debate what are the top 3 things that slow that process down and then come up with at least 1 juicy idea for how to reduce that time gap.
- RC RACING GAME. In their teams they have to devise a process to assemble their remote control car and get it across the finish line first. Processes to systematize include approaching the mechanics bench to solicit parts (in exchange for correct answers to training trivia questions). They also have to assemble all the parts and batteries into a working car. Then they have to navigate a difficult obstacle course with their car. Hitting a pylon means you go back to the beginning and start over. If they take the time to read the instructions manual first they find a coupon for two free parts.
- #1 MAKE INFLUENCERS LOOK GOOD. Tell your CAs, “I may say yes, I may say no but I’ll say it tomorrow.” Experience has taught us that they respect decisive Account Managers and avoid wafflers. MAKE THEM HEROES. Make your influencers look like heros GIVES YOU A CAN-DO AURA. As we will discover, a big part of accelerating the process is a thorough understanding of creditworthiness. Influencers can smell the competence on you. Everyone would take a quick no rather than a drawn out maybe BRAND THE BANK. Word will get around fast. BDC is open for business. COMPETITIVE WEAPON. The other banks are turtles. Be a hare.
- #2 REWARDS ACCRUE. Happy clients reward you with repeat loans. Clients will complain if we are slow. But no one ever gets angry when we show up a week early. But think back to your last slow loan. If it took 6 weeks with lots of back and forth they won’t come back. No one enjoys pain. Make it fast = make it easy to come back. FLIPCHART…There’s a strong positive correlation between productivity and engagement and repeat loans. Productivity $#RepeatEngagement Target225.318% Quebec North34.29.129.5% Winnipeg25.27.127.1 Scarborough26.66.622.8%
- #3 UNDERWRITING THE BOTTLENECK? If your package is 100% complete how long does it really take to write? If we can consistently keep the UWC full, we can justify additional resources. JUMP TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. The queuing in the UWC is chronological: first in, first served. If you can get onto the standing list first, your loan gets worked on next. But if it took you an extra 4-5 days to collect the missing pieces of information, 6-7 other loans may have slipped in ahead of yours, particularly nearing month-end.
- #4 REDUCE STRESS. DELAYS CAUSE STRESS. No-one likes being stuck waiting for clients to give you the missing information. If it goes on for two extra weeks it just adds to your frustration. You get your manager on your back asking for updates. Also, when we’re supposed to get back to a prospect/influencer and we don’t do it right away,the guilty stress starts to pile up each day that passes. What if there was a way to squish that waiting period down to less than a day most of the time? SUCCESS KILLS STRESS. Imagine ploughing through 3 months worth of activity in one month. How good would that feel? How much time would that free up for you? What could you do with the time you’ll save?
- <number> #5 YOUR PLATE CAN ONLY HOLD SO MUCH. If you want to be able to add new prospects, new loans, new CG, you need to clear away the old business in order to give the new stuff the time and attention it requires. If it takes you 9 weeks on average rather than 1 week to get things done, imagine how heaping-full your plate will soon be. Ready-or-not more stuff is going to keep coming at you daily. Dispatching them quickly liberates you to take on the new stuff as it arrives. THERE’S JUST NO ARGUING…with the cold hard fact that a banker that takes 6 weeks to get stuff done on average is not on par with someone who averages 6 days. CLEAR YOUR MIND. Clear your plate off to clear your mind. Besides who wants to keep chewing on old stale food that’s been around for six weeks now? DELEGATE OR ELIMINATE. (More on this later). If it’s on your desk, it’s stuck. If it’s on someone else’s desk it’s at least moving forward and being worked on. Don’t let anything stay on your desk for more than 24 hours. Touch a piece of paper only once.
- #6 TEST THEIR Commitment. What is their willingness to move forward with you. QUALIFY YOUR CUSTOMER. By pushing at each step in the process you get to discover quicker if the client is going to toss the ball back to you or not. If you say, “So how about I swing back again tomorrow at this time and pick up the check,” and they resist giving you the meeting you have created an opportunity to resolve a sticking point you otherwise wouldn’t have known existed. And if it kills the deal, well so what. Now you can move on to something else. BRING IT TO A HEAD SOONER. And if you accelerate the whole process you get to test the client’s resolve sooner.
- #7 ENERGIZING. Everyone gets momentum when they see light at the end of the tunnel….
- [again with the unintended (I assure you) double entendre] …and the light at the end of a short tunnel is even brighter. More motivating. More satisfying. Racing from A to Z on a given loan in six days rather than six weeks is that short tunnel. It will refuel you in many ways not to mention the impact on your pocket book. If you only have 232 working days in a year and you suddenly start getting your loans done 4 weeks quicker on average, you’ll find it so easy to over-achieve target.
- #9 RISING WATERS LIFT ALL BOATS. When your branch becomes a hum of activity and the stress and fear of not making budget again this month becomes a fading distant memory, engagement rises. People like working on a winning team. Again, look to Winnipeg and Calgary as examples. IT’S FUN! Why shouldn’t work be fun! And chugging along on the same loan for 9 weeks isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time. Remember Bob from the Rocketman who was massaging the same 11 prospects on his desk that, if he was honest, he had had for months without any tangible step forward toward closure. Not a good place to be. MOMENTUM. Positive morale is a momentum builder (and just the opposite can be true – negative spiral). The antithesis is people who only have one deal on their desk so they drag it out as long as possible to make themselves look busy.
- #10 SPENDING LESS TIME AT WORK IS GOOD. You have two lives: work and home. Strive to excel at both. If we can find ways to cut the delays in our processes, you’ll exceed target with less effort and less hours. It just won’t be a fact of life to come in super early and stay super late anymore.
- PATENT PENDING. I coined this phrase. What it means is that it really is possible to do less work in total every week. You do it by eliminating unnecessaries. But at the same time do more of the “right” stuff. RAINMAKERS. These are the guys who have learned to be lazy. They just focus on the few KRAs that make the biggest impact and excel at those. As a result, they parade around the office with the biggest results, but make it look so easy.
- SHIP WITHOUT A RUDDER. This is a classic time management lesson. If you get into the office each morning and check your e-mails and your voicemails, the next thing you know it’s 11:00 and you have no sense of accomplishment. You are like a ship that is buffeted by the winds and current and goes wherever they take you, certainly not where you would have liked to go. TAIL WAGGING THE DOG. You need to be in charge of your to-do list and your calendar, not the other way around. You’re the master not the slave. The way to gain control is to sit down, formally, and plan every day. [more on how-to later] NIGHT BEFORE. Try this for a week. Stop working at 4:30. Just stop. And build a list of exactly what your going to accomplish the next day. Make it realistic. See if this doesn’t bring your day sharply into focus the next morning. You will find you get a tremendously satisfying sense of accomplishment. LIVE DEMO OF OUTLOOK. Drag and drop e-mails to tasks, task to Appointments etc.
- PRIORITIZE. Rank order your to-do list into A, B, and C. Then rank the As into A-1, A-2 and so on. Never work on a B when there’s an A remaining. D stands for delegate. E stands for eliminate. FLIPCHART.
- [graphic of Vilfredo Pareto who’s 80/20 principle is so famous] KRAs. In every aspect of life or business there’s always 3-4 things that if you excel at just those things, you end up being successful. WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY ARE AT BDC? EXAMPLE. When you have a looming to-do list which includes some overdue Customer Reviews. Chances are there’s about 20% that are the biggest offenders because they are way way overdue. D0 those ones first and it’ll take the worst of the pressure off. Same goes for your list of undisbursed: start with the much shorter list of ones that are >180 days. Those alone explain 80% of your “time to first disbursement” statistic.
- THE BIGGER THE JOB THE MORE WE PROCRASTINATE. It seems so huge and looming that it defeats us even thinking about where to start. Kind of like prepping for a term paper you aren’t looking forward to writing. But break it down into simple bite-sized tasks gets that essay done and into the past quicker. OIL BARRELS. This was an experience that Brian Tracy about to illustrate how a massive and daunting task can be chiselled down into finite, easy-to-swallow pieces. He told the tale of a group crossing the Mojave desert. The only thing that kept them motivated and striving forward were these painted oil barrels each set 13.8km apart on the horizon. They just made for the next barrel and could always look behind to see how far they’d already come.
- MAKE APPOINTMENTS WITH YOURSELF. Literally make appointments with yourself and treat them as seriously as if they were with Jacques. SEGUE TO NEXT SLIDE. At BDC, three of those appointments are on the next three slides…
- BUILD SLUSH INTO YOUR CALENDAR DAILY. You don’t know yet which disbursement, CREM update, Opportunity Profile or whatever is going to need to be attended to urgently, but you do know for certain that something will. So block it off on your calendar. Don’t leave yourself scrambling, running late to appointments, getting home late because you didn’t plan for the “inevitable unpredictables” to coin a new oxymoron. DON’T LET IT PILE UP. Or the mole hill will seem like a mountain.
- EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED. Leave time for firefighting. Leave some space in your calendar for the unexpected.
- AN APPLE A DAY…The single most important appointment on a BD/PD calendar is the time you book with yourself to get on the phone and arrange meetings. #1 PROCRASTINATOR. Every branch a go to people offer up great excuses for why they didn’t do a little bit of prospecting this week. Trust me, you will have plenty of time to get all your urgent paperwork done in 4 months, ‘cause that’s when the calls you didn’t make today will not be maturing into a loan. Sales cycles are as natural a phenomenon as the cycle of seasons and the planting of seeds in a farmers field. You can’t take 3 weeks off to get caught up and then “cram for the midterm.” Seeds have to planted in the spring, not when you’ve got some free time in late August. CONTROL YOUR TIME (NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND). Make your prospecting calls so you can fill up your days modestly leaving plenty of paperwork time and know in advance where you’ll be 1 to1.5 weeks out at a time
- FROG’S ARE GROSS. This is the title of an excellent Brian Tracy book on avoiding procrastination. The frog at BDC is the prospecting calls I mentioned on the last slide. The concept is that if the first thing you do each morning is swallow a frog you can rest assured that it will be the hardest thing you’ll have to do that day and be delighted that it’s over with already. Do it early in the day. Do it before the fires start to burn. SLIDE SEGUE. If you think this little guy is cute, you’ll be glad I didn’t go with my original choice (SEE NEXT SLIDE…)
- …yummy! This photo was taken at Federick’s last Thursday.
- CHOICES. The Eat the Frog concept is about setting priorities. What separates the men from the boys so to speak is their little daily choices about what to work on first and what should wait.
- CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS CAREFULLY. You can’t choose your boss, but you can choose your friends. It’s just one extra thing to do each day if you have to pump yourself back up and get your enthusiasm and can-do attitude back. Skip it by avoiding the water-cooler complainers.
- But if you decide to join the whiner’s club down at Pity City, at least get a proper membership card.
- GUILTY PLEASURE. What are your personal time-wasters. You know you’re doing one when your guilty conscience tells you should probably get back to work. For Scarborough it’s Nigel showing up and the whole gang going for lunch. An absolute blast to be sure but if we are honest with ourselves, we gotta ask how come we weren’t out seeing a client or prospect. Why were we available to go for curry? Because we weren’t planning out a week and a half in advance.
- Same goes for all the electronic and human distractions. If you’ve given yourself one hour to complete an important A-1 task then close your door and don’t permit interruptions. IN-BOX STRESS REDUCTION. Us the McGhee method: block time to read e-mails and do a quick assessment. Delete it (unless it’s not Legal or HR or something you will need inside of 3-6 months), Do it (in under two minutes), Delegate it or Defer it (to a task in the task bar of Outlook). This can help you process the 100s of e-mails you get weekly and not have them lingering in your in-box and re-read multiple times and not dealt with..
- <number> CLUTTERED DESK = CLUTTERED MIND. [Therefore Nigel is one very confused individual.] Each night before you leave, empty your desk leaving only the A-1 thing that MUST be done tomorrow. Le Bon Croissant story. Every Friday the owner and his assistant did not lock the door on the factory until they had dealt with every piece of paper on his desk. Nothing got carried over to Monday.
- SINGLE BEST WAY TO TRUNCATE THE SELL CYCLE. Always, always, always get a concrete next step with a prospect. Get on their calendar. “Where should we go from here?”, “So,what’s our next step.”, “You’ve given me a lot to digest. What I’d like to do is go back and crunch the numbers, consider your goals and then come back here, say next Tuesday at 2:00 and present what I think we might be able to do to be of service, does that work for you?” SEGUE TO NEXT SLIDE. Another way of thinking of this is…..
- This slide contains two distinct messages. See them both? MULTIPLE MEETING CLOSE. We have a 4-7 meeting on average sale cycle. Sometimes longer. By getting an agreement to a concrete next step they have just bought one more small link. After awhile they look back and realize they have a chain. If you go for a close too early like, “so are you going to accept my $3.8M dollar loan or what?” they won’t bite, but if you sell them on getting together to pour over a revised cashflow budget, and then you sell them on getting together to discuss a term sheet, and so on, these links all add up to a long chain. They’ve also invested lots of their time with you and don’t want to see it all wasted so they go ahead and agree to your proposal. REFUSAL IS GOOD. It helps you qualify your prospects after all. If they refuse to let you get on their calendar again soon, that’s a big piece of information. Unearth an objection or professionally disengage and revisit in six months time.
- BRING COFFEE. Plan to stay long enough to ask lots of good questions. Plan as many as you can in advance. Do the half-page trick to think of more and to listen attentively (DEMO). People love to be listened to and nothing says I’m listening like a pad and a pen. SPEED UP THE SALES CYCLE. Many clients have only the vaguest notion of what they want. If you finish calls or meetings with, “well keep us in mind if any expansion projects come up,” you’ve just added 6 months to your sales cycle. Really dig in with the probing, onionizing questions. Help them unearth and articulate their needs. After all, even though they may want to finance a building next Fall, what growing company couldn’t make good use of a 250K inventory loan while they’re waiting. GO TO THE WELL ONCE. Trust me, by asking for all the information you need at one time, you won’t scare them into the arms of TD. And going back for more info is not only annoying to them but adds to your processing time. SLIDE SEGUE. And if this little cup of coffee isn’t big enough to allow you to get through all your questions, then look at the one on the next slide…
- Now that’s an XL coffee!
- THEIR STOPWATCH IS TICKING. Client’s hold us accountable to quick turnaround. And yet ironically we are often stalled waiting for them to give us that missing piece of information. Well if it doesn’t show up today on the fax machine as promised then jump in your car and go get it!
- COUNTLESS LOST HOURS. What I’m seeing as I visit so many branches is AMs (experienced and new alike) championing very weak or non-starter deals. The effort, time and damaged reputation just aren’t worth it. Guard your time jealously. I understand the behaviours – when you’re behind target for the third month in a row every deal starts to look good! BUT TELL MEWHERE THE FIRE IS. It is too facile to say don’t chase smoke. That refers only to non-starters. All other loans will still require creativity to apply wart ointment and trim hair.
- [This is a picture of your AVP Credit.] CREDIBILITY COMES FROM CREDIT-ABILITY. Study a loan per week. You can’t sell what you don’t understand intimately. CONFIDENCE COMES FROM COMPETENCE. Your speed will pick up when you can confidently crunch the numbers and finesse your AVP. You also now where to scratch below the surface and what can be ignored during due diligence which can chop days out of the process.
- BUDDY SYSTEM. When you have too much work and/or too many loans on your plate to get done by the deadline, share. Share with a friend on an IOU basis. It will help smooth out the hills and valleys in your level of busyness. Plus, 50% of a loan authorized is better than 100% of a loan stalled.
- <number>