Reality Architecture for Sales People - Win The Day (Part 1)

Bend Time To Your Will

Intro

The internet is rife with silver bullets: Articles, videos and tools abound proffering "the one weird trick" that will fill your inbox with interested responses, closed won business and raving customers. While alluring, Shakespeare warned us long ago that "all that glitters is not gold", and most that have gone down the path of seeking silver oft find nickel in its place.

At this point, the disillusioned individual has two options: Continue to follow the siren song of easy fixes, or wake up to the reality that producing desirable outcomes takes something more - BEcoming, in the words of Dr. Trevor Kashey, "the kind of person it takes to experience the life (they deem) worth living".

When I sat down to write an article about behavior modification for sales people, I sought to approach it from a first-principles perspective - what general truths can be observed that when applied consistently - regardless of industry, market size or even role - will compound?

Warren Buffett calls compound interest the “eighth wonder of the world” for a reason

Make no mistake, this is no silver bullet. The roadmap I share below promises nothing but discipline, sacrifice and mundanity. I contend that far from being a bug, these truths are a feature, for the hardest steel is tempered through the toughest conditions.

Inspirational words aside, these costs represent a drop in the bucket when compared to the ultimate price: Regret. We are all acutely aware that our time on this plane is limited, yet for the most part we fail to act on it. Seneca said it better than I ever can: "You act like mortals in all that you fear, and immortals in all that you desire."

Unfortunately, as far as a behavioral reinforcement mechanism goes, regret definitionally only exists in hindsight - when it's too late to do anything about it. So in the pre-dawn hours that always seem to creep up, I lean on the wisdom of another stoic, who 1800 years prior described the struggle all too well:

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself:

“I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

There are so many sales people who drag by day after day, doing the absolute bare minimum it takes to stay in their seat and then complaining about external factors when they don’t experience the outcomes they want. If you’re a part of the tiny minority that’s willing to put in the work to serve your customers to the fullest extent and in the process phase shift to a more fulfilling reality, read on.

We are starting our series on behavior modification for sales people with a perspective on building your daily routine. Why this starting place? If our mandate is to create a "regret minimization framework" (H/T BowTiedBull), then a logical starting place would be one in which we maximize our productivity - defined henceforth as "quality output per unit of time".

For sales people, output is pretty easily defined - if you’re a full stack AE, that represents revenue, and if you’re a BDR, then your output is the production of qualified opportunities. The worst feeling is getting to the end of your day and knowing you could have done more, so let’s talk about how to set your day up to avoid that.

The Routine

The inspiration for this came from Alex Becker's "3 AM God Mode Focus Routine”

Ironically, Alex's videos are easy to dismiss because of his marketing tactics, but the discerning viewer will get more than a few nuggets - you don't exit a 9 figure business by accident, and if anybody's qualified to talk about maximizing output per unit of time, it's Alex Becker.

We will cover the Global Rules of this framework, give you an Example Routine and then provide Action Steps to close out the article.

Global Rules

The goal is not to copy the routine exactly, it's to copy the thought process, which is to identify when to slot the following windows that comprise your day:

"Eat The Frog" Time - Your Creative/High Effort Window:

• Your longest block of uninterrupted, flow state work to tackle your most cognitively challenging creative or high effort work.

• Low variability - focus on moving your "big rocks". Focus on one, two things MAX over this time frame: "If you have to eat a live frog, do it first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day." - Mark Twain

  • I highly recommend this time be used on activies that will either (a) maximize the number of conversations you can have during your “Service window or (b) make you a more effective resource for your customers when you DO engage them in conversation. This might look like:

    • Going through and bucketing your leads for success so that you’re prioritizing prospects with the highest propensity to buy first

    • Sourcing workable and reachable phone numbers for prospects with bad contact data

    • Consuming industry-relevant news to TURN INTO CONTENT (consumption for its own sake should always be detered)

    • If you have a targeted account list, reading press releases and financials for them in order to synthesize unique insight

• You'll want to align this window with when you experience your highest levels of focus - use the sleep chronotype quiz to help with determining this

• Some people think of this as working "on the business" time vs. working "in the business" time (see: **Customer/Staff Time**)

• Other Considerations For Selecting Your "Hardest Tasks" Window:

  • You expect a lower volume of communication, and even if you do get something It's perfectly acceptable to ignore it

• For most people this is first thing in the morning but for other people it's late at night

• Note this will likely be the inversion of your Health/Education Time

Customer Time - Your "Service" Window

• Your “Golden Hours” for prospecting and revenue generation. This will be when you follow your buckets from closest to revenue and back - take your demos in here, and then fill any white space with prospecting - ideally cold calling as that’s the channel where you’ll get into one on one conversations the fastest, has the highest conversion rate and where you’ll get the highest density of information. Note buckets are fractal - i.e: You’ll want to focus on and exhaust the channel that’s closest to revenue first as well.

• The work you do in your “Eat The Frog” window supports this work - you don’t want to spend any of your golden hours building lists, doing research, checking email etc. This is how mediocre sales people fall behind, get to the end of the day and then throw their hands up and say “where did my time go?”

• Higher variability vis a vis "Eat The Frog" time - rather than working on one or two big tasks, you're task switching much more often and reactive rather than proactive

• Becker calls this his "low effort, dumb work", but I find a more helpful reframe to think of this as your "time to serve others".

Health/Education Time - Your Recharge Window

• This is the window where you invest in your physical health (working out), mental health (meditation) and personal development (education) - don't do it in the middle of the day - this will likely be the inverse of your "Eat The Frog" (i.e: If you're doing your high effort work first thing in the morning, hit the gym and read after work)

• Embrace Kaizen - It's easy to feel like you don't get "enough" of this time on a day to day basis, but 1% better every day compounds into being 37x better in a year. Conversely, getting 1% worse every day leaves you at 2.6% of your original level - YIKES. The only error you can make here is to not take action.

Eating windows

• Digesting food has a cognitive impact - minimizing frequency of caloric consumption and high volumes of food allows cognitive enhancers like caffeine to work better

• If you're in a caloric surplus, stick to something like "The Vertical Diet" to optimize digestion

• We will cover diet in more depth in a later article

Sleep window

• Identify your sleep chronotype to drive the rest of your routine. We will not belabor the importance of sleep here, as it has been covered exhaustively by a variety of other resources (for more on the topic, Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" is EXCELLENT.

Additional Considerations

• As the day progresses, your work windows will diminish in length and you will require more breaks - plan accordingly

• Breaks should be viewed as opportunities to do tasks that refresh your mind: Going for a walk, meditating etc. Things like doom scrolling, purposeless media consumption etc. train unproductive dopaminergic habits and don't actually let your mind "rest". I like playing guitar (this is more of a mechanism to slot in practice than anything else)

• There are models of success no matter what you want to optimize around- Not an early risk and worker? Jeff Bezos gets to work at 10. Have a family and want to be around for them? The CEO of Shopify goes home at 5. Alex works anywhere from 8-12 hours a day, but stresses that the amount of time is secondary to getting things done - circling back to our original definition of productivity: "Quality output per unit of time".

Alex Becker's (Example) Routine

Eat The Frog - "Hardest Tasks" Window

3:00-4:00 AM Wake Up

• Alex immediately goes into his "Hardest Tasks" window (he notes this is"heavily coffee assisted")

• He notes wake-up time should be based on sleep chronotype, and that he likes getting up around then because he's excited to get to work

• Works "on the business" rather than "in the business" here - his staff is still asleep so this is when he gets his best work done

9:00-10:00 AM - End of "Hardest Tasks" block

• After this is over, "you will burn through your will power chemicals and your ability to do things for the rest of the day will be much lower"

• Go take a break - Alex will go for a walk or watch CEO interviews at this stage

Customer/Staff Time - "Service" Window

11:00 AM-1 PM - Staff oriented work - training staff OR talking to customers ("Service" window)

• Work with staff/Manual stuff/customer support tickets/reviewing team's sales calls/"basic low effort conversations with contractors"

• This window is "mostly low effort, repetitive and manual, NOT creative work"

1-1:30 PM - 30 minute break

1:30-3:30/4:00 PM - Low Effort Work -

• More of the above

Self-Care/Recharge Time - "Recovery" Window

4:00 PM - First meal (Alex intermittent fasts)

• Food digestion slows down cognition, and also impairs the efficacy of cognitive-enhancers (caffeine etc.)

  • if you’re trying to stay lean, then intermittent fasting is a no-brainer.

  • If you’re trying to build muscle, consider something like “The Vertical Diet”, which optimizes for digestion while consuming surplus calories.

4:00-4:30 PM - Work Out

• Depending on your goals this may be just fine, but for people looking to build muscle you're probably going to want to invest somewhere between 60-90 minutes here - personally, I do not think it’s possible for a sales person to be too jacked - article on working out to follow

4:30 PM - Meal 2

5:00 PM - Done

• For Recreation:

  • CEO interviews on YouTube

    • Alex prefers this - more information density relative to books which he notes has a lot of fluff

    • Audiobooks and go for a walk

7:30-8 -Bed Time

• Do your meditation here. Sales is an emotional rollercoaster and emotional regulation is a muscle just like your biceps. Wim Hoff Method is a God send. Great way to wind down for the day.

• Blue light glasses, nose strip is a huge hack for great sleep

Action Items

Now that you've got the global rules to build your own daily routine and an example, here's a checklist you can use to set up your very own:

1. Identify and Structure Your "Eat The Frog" Time

• Action: Determine your most productive, high-focus window for tackling difficult tasks by understanding your chronotype (use the [sleep chronotype quiz](https://sleepopolis.com/chronotypes-quiz/) to guide you).

• Why: This is when you should focus on your most cognitively demanding work or creative projects. Aligning this time with your natural energy peaks is crucial for maximum efficiency.

2. Identify and Structure Your "Service” Time

• Action: Block out 5-7 hours in your day to handle meetings, customer communication, prospecting etc.

• Why: It allows you to manage the "low-effort" or variable work that involves communication with others, keeping your creative time free from interruptions.

3. Identify and Structure Your "Health/Education Time"

• Action: Choose a consistent time to invest in your health (exercise, meditation) and education (reading, learning new skills). This should typically be the inverse of your high-focus period.

• Why: Just as your cognitive work needs a focused block, your physical and mental well-being require a consistent recharge period to keep you at your best.

4. Optimize Your Eating and Break Windows

• Action: Plan your meal times and breaks thoughtfully. Avoid large, frequent meals during your peak work hours to prevent mental fatigue, and use breaks for activities that refresh rather than distract.

• Why: Both food and breaks can either enhance or drain your focus. Being intentional with how you refuel and rest will maximize your productivity.

5. Prioritize Quality Sleep

• Action: Design your sleep routine based on your sleep chronotype and ensure you wind down properly each night (blue light glasses, meditation, etc.).

• Why: Consistent and restorative sleep is essential for maintaining the energy and mental clarity required to excel in your daily routine.

Conclusion

There are no hacks to structuring your day to become the most successful sales person you can be, but there are considerations as to how to plan your day that provide thematic structure. By using the above guidelines, you will be well on your day to improving your results and, more importantly, doing so in a way that is sustainable and allows for positive compounding growth to turn you into a true Apex predator.