This morning was the normal chaos in the house, plus some extra salt and pepper in the mix just to liven things up.
Everyone rushing around, preparing lunches – hoping the London train was going to be on time – what about the traffic to the station – you know what a weekday morning is like with young adults.
Then, the revelation arrives “Dad where are my car keys?” Because yet again my youngest can’t find them – this will the third set lost since she started driving.
Couple of points in that. One of course is the disorganised mind of the young – trivial things like car keys are not important in the scheme of things and they think their memory will last them forever.
Still the point is unless you have a clear process, a routine then you could well spend years of your life looking for stuff, rummaging in bags for items that should be in there – my old mate Laurence – liked a drink, died in a car accident – sober – used to be very precise wherever he went – would walk in the house, place down very deliberately in a spot that he liked – keys and wallet. Normally on a shelf – somewhere that people wouldn’t normally touch or want to move items. On high shelf, top of a microwave – somewhere safe.
His wallet and keys were always where he left them – unless deliberately moved and the person that moved them would normally let him know. Fact is he always knew where his keys and wallet were. It seems that being able to find things is important- placing them down as a part of a routine indicates less of a reliance on memory and more on the routine – something that seems to help those with deficient memories caused by age or illness.
Fact is, using a routine is something that makes more sense than ever. As I am getting a little older I know my memory is not as quick as it once was – relying on routines, routinely placing keys in one place, my wallet in another – doing things in a certain way means that I don’t have to rely on remembering.
In your business your sales and your marketing should be routine. Something you do out of habit every day or week or whenever – a regular time every so often. It’s not until sales stop coming in that you realise the last week or month has been spent firefighting – and now you’ve lost your keys as it were – sales stop. Without sales nothing else makes sense.
My theory is that as we get older the connections in our brains get harder to make, if you like they wear out. Once you understand that the electrical impulses that move signals around our brains are transferred chemically from neuron to neuron you’ll start to understand that small amounts of wear from use are likely to have a profound effect on how we both remember.
I would assume that over the years the connecting material that sends chemicals from one surface to the other or the chemicals used must change or wear out – and it’s this that makes our memories fail or at least falter we age. It’s not that we’ve forgotten – we just can’t remember – it’s the recall that’s the problem.
It is therefore important to have routines and routine places where things are stored – places that are so solidly built into our system that there is no chance of forgetting (being unable to recall). For the same reason it’s important for you as a business owner to have systems in place that drive sales – things you routinely use in order to make your business work. Because if you don’t then you’ll forget to do them and then sales start to fall off – customer service slips – like losing your keys, making less sales means your business is no longer as efficient as it should be.
Ready get your bum in gear and increase sales then you have a borrow my brain session that will sort out once and for all your sales and marketing, small business problems. May also help you find your car keys.
Richard
Links below.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24121738
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131010205325.htm