Stop Counting Money You Haven't Made Yet

One of the easiest ways to have a great week in sales and a terrible month afterward is to start spending the money in your head before you've actually earned it.

And I'm not just talking about physically spending the money.

I'm talking about what happens to your behavior when you believe the money is coming.

You work hard.

You build a pipeline.

You have some really promising conversations.

A few deals look like they're going to close.

And you start doing the math.

If this one closes, that's this much.

If those two fund, that's another amount.

And suddenly you're looking at a pretty good month.

So you relax.

Not completely.

Just a little.

You stop pushing as hard.

You make fewer calls.

You put off some of the activities that created those opportunities in the first place.

Because, psychologically, you've already been paid.

Except you haven't.

I was talking with somebody who'd just had an excellent month.

His best in a long time.

And a lot of it came from one particularly productive week where he'd worked incredibly hard and generated a significant number of opportunities.

But after seeing how promising those opportunities were, he started calculating what they might turn into.

He figured he was going to have a great month.

And he took his foot off the gas.

Some of the deals closed.

Some didn't.

He still had a very good month.

But now he was looking at the following month and realizing he'd stopped doing some of the work that would have created the next round of opportunities.

That's the problem.

You're not just risking the money from the deals that don't close.

You're risking the opportunities you never created because you thought you were already covered.

And this is where I think people need to separate three things.

An opportunity.

An expectation.

And an actual result.

Those are not interchangeable.

You can have a tremendous opportunity and make nothing from it.

You can have a very reasonable expectation that something will happen and still be wrong.

Until the deal is closed and the money is actually secured, you're dealing with a possibility.

Maybe a strong possibility.

But still a possibility.

And possibilities should not be allowed to quietly change the standards you hold yourself to.

Now, I'm not suggesting you should work at maximum intensity every hour of every day.

That's not sustainable, and it's not necessarily productive.

There are legitimate reasons to take time off, slow down, spend time with your family, or simply decide you've earned some rest.

But I think you need to be honest about the basis for that decision.

Are you choosing to slow down because you've accomplished what you intended to accomplish?

Or are you choosing to slow down because you think the work you've already done is probably going to pay off?

Those are different decisions.

With this client, we established a simple rule.

If he wanted to ease up based on his financial performance, he could do that after reaching a defined amount of secured income.

Not based on how many deals were in the pipeline.

Not based on what he expected to close.

Based on income that was actually secured and payable to him.

It wasn't the final standard we wanted him to operate at.

It was an improvement over the one he was using.

And that's important, too.

Sometimes you don't need to go from inconsistent to perfectly consistent overnight.

You need to identify the specific behavior that's hurting you and move the standard one step in the right direction.

Because the goal is to become somebody who can perform without needing a financial emergency every few weeks to restore urgency.

You want the effort to be more consistent.

You want the pipeline to keep moving.

You want next month's opportunities being created while this month's opportunities are closing.

And you can't do that if the emotional reward of a promising deal causes you to stop doing the work.

The deal isn't closed because you feel good about it.

The money isn't yours because the numbers look attractive.

And the future isn't secured because you've done the math on what might happen.

Count the opportunities.

Track the pipeline.

Be optimistic about what's possible.

But make your decisions based on what is real.