I often tell my clients — owners and leaders of large, successful multi-generational companies — that they need to spend more time working on the business, rather than working in it all the time. The same is true for vice presidents, division leaders, regional managers, and front-line sales and customer service people also.  When we spend our days reacting to one customer concern after another, we are working in the business. It’s reactive. It’s random. It causes us to bounce around like a pinball.

Conversely, working on the business is proactive work. When you plan strategy, you’re working on the business. But it’s so much wider than this. When you identify three prospects (not customers, but prospects) to reach out to this week, that’s proactive and strategic. That’s working on the business. When you plan your referral requests, and your did you know questions, and your testimonial requests, and your hand-written notes, that’s proactive on the business work.

 The beauty is that we don’t need to spend half our time working on the business. Eighty-twenty is enough (with 20% being on the business). Heck, give me 15 minutes of the right on the business work each day, and your sales will grow strategically, an impossibility if you spend all of your in the business.

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 Last week’s Revenue Growth Video covered the critical role of accountability in sales growth.

My latest book, The Revenue Growth Habit, is the reigning, defending 2015 Sales Book of the Year (as selected by 800-CEO-Read).