My Public relations specialist Deb Decker today forwarded me an email from a newsletter she gets and it talked about sweating the “small stuff”. It mentioned two examples to drive the point home. They were….

• At this year’s U.S. Open Golf Championship, an Angel beat a Tiger by 1 stroke and earned $648,664 more.
• At this year’s Daytona 500, the winner took the checkered flag by 0.02 seconds and banked nearly $400,000 more than the second place finisher.

So yes a big case can be made for sweating the small thing! Yet to me to many people in sales and business for that matter sweat the wrong small stuff! Let me explain what I mean by that. To me many sales people sweat small stuff like,

• Are the marketing slicks or data sheets perfect?
• Do I know every single answer to every possible question?
• What if I quote to high/low?
• Is every word in my email perfect?
• And on and on it goes………

Now are those things important? Sure and you should pay attention to them yet the small stuff sales people should be sweating are things like

• Can I squeeze in one more call a day on average?
• Am I sure all my activities are geared toward more business not busy work?
• Can I out task some of my work, (If you are a 100K plus sales guy a 8 dollar an hour appointment setter could make you a 200K guy over night)
• Can I find more personal things to set me apart? Send a card, etc.
• Am I always working with the mind set of DO IT NOW?

To me these are the “small stuff” to sweat. Say you close 1 deal for each of 8 cold calls. One extra call a day is 5 a week or 250 a year. That equals 31 more closes a month. For many sales people that can be the difference between 80% of quota and 250% depending on your industry, average sale price, etc. And that is really a small thing! One more call a day.

On another level if you are a good closer and your close large deals do you understand how much money you waste on the phone trying to set appointments. Appointments can be set by anyone who can speak well and read a script. I have known a lot of heavy hitters that hire a part time appointment setter for 8-12 dollars an hour and pay them contract out of pocket.

One in particular took his production from about 1.1 million a year to about 3 million a year. The gross increase to his salary almost 250K! His cost for the labor was 15 hours a week or about 7500 dollars. Net gain = $240,000! Oh and to make it better he told me he was working only about 70% as hard because he never set or confirmed appointments, his personally hired appointment setter did.

See these are both “small things”, one is an extra 10 minutes of work a day the other about 150 dollars a week for a guy who makes many times that in a day if he sells well. Yet both can turn an sub par performer into a star or turn a star into a mega super star.

So yes do sweat the small stuff just make sure it is the right stuff to be sweating, is short does it directly effect your bottom line revenue? If not don’t sweat it, if it does well you know what to do.