Trench Work and Deal Work
If you’re in sales, this is for you.
There are two vital actions your day should be broken into.
Trench work and deal work.
Trench Work
This is the work that’s tedious and boring and feels like it may be pointless, and you question if it’s the most valuable use of your time.
Things like calls out one by one, emails after email, direct message after message – it’s a grind. And often, while doing it, you’re getting no love. No inflow. Crickets. Often the time when you start doing it is because you haven’t done it earlier and now your pipe is dry so you need to do the boring prospecting work.
But it is important and it’s productive.
Deal Work
This is when you’ve got a lead that looks promising and you’re now setting up calls, creating proposals and getting traction working from the initial lead to a closed deal. These are generally fun and make you feel your time is being spent productively and the actions you’re taking will lead to a positive conclusion.
Your day needs to be broken down into these two actions. Working on trench work that leads to deal work and concluding the deal work that comes in.
It’s tempting to neglect the trench work but your future self is going to hate you when the pipe dries up.
Right now, in this economic environment, it’s probably going to require a 70/30 split.
70% trenchwork and 30% deal work.
Spend your time doing the work you don’t want to do so you can spend time doing work you love to do.
Not doing enough trench work in this economic environment will hurt you.
Lean in, do the work now.
Balance your day with 70% trench work so you can earn 30% deal work.
Get after it.
— Robert
About Robert Cornish: Robert Cornish founded Richter in early 2008 to build an agency focused on communication strategies that support sales growth for business to business technology-related companies. Bootstrapped with zero capital in the middle of the financial meltdown, Richter went on to make the Inc 5000 list comprised of the fastest-growing companies in America five times. Richter made the Silicon Valley Fast 50 four times and the Entrepreneur360 award two times. Robert has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Selling Power Magazine, Inc Magazine and IDEA magazine. He's been a guest speaker for ACG Los Angeles, IASA Summit, West Point and been interviewed for 33Voices, EnTRUEpreneurship Podcast and IDEA Magazine by Northwood University. In 2012 Wiley & Sons published his book, What Works, about the lessons he's learned while growing his agency from start-up navigating his way to a multi-million dollar agency. Robert currently owns four companies.
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