It is officially spring and that means many things to many people. One thing that is certain is that farmers are getting ready to plant. Whatever your background or upbringing, the example of a farmer about to start planting has relevance to you, and offers lessons to improve your business and life.

Now if you did not grow up in a rural area, you probably don’t know what that entails. You may think that as soon as its warm, farmers start up their tractors, pour seeds in the planter, and take off across the field. But it is a little more complicated than that. Let me explain.

Before a field is ready to be sown full of seeds, there is preparation that is critical to the final results. In the winter the rain, the sleet, and the snow compact the soil; so it needs to be loosened and fluffed up, for the seeds to be able to take root. Which means that a farmer must run a piece of machinery called a “finisher” across the entire field to “work the ground”.

The finisher loosens up the soil and levels the ground to provide a nice seedbed, and a uniform planting surface. Driving the finisher across the field requires hours of time behind the wheel of a tractor. To the untrained eye, this step in the planting process might look like a waste of time, and if a farmer did not run the finisher across the field he could certainly still plant his crops. But, the farmer understands that if he chooses to shave some time off, take a short cut, and not run the finisher through the field, his results will be dramatically different. The ground would stay compacted in places, the seeds would take root in some areas and rot in others, and the yields would be less.

The catch here is that it would be a month or two before the farmer would be able to see the consequences of his shortcut. And it would not be until the fall harvest that he would be able to quantify the difference in results. The worst part is that if he did check on his fields soon after they began to sprout, saw his poor results, and realized his mistake he would either have to live with the mistake all summer long, knowing that his fall harvest would be terrible or completely start the planting process all over with the finisher this time and waste all of the work he had already done.

The point here is that we all have a thousand small, menial, thankless tasks everyday that are similar to running the finisher across the field. Many of us have been running our planter through the field for years without making sure that the soil was prepared for those seeds to take root, and then we have looked at our results and wondered why they have not been as high as we had planned.

When you take a closer look at the top performers in your industry, you will see that they are in the habit of always completing the small menial thankless tasks. They are doing the things that on the surface, to the untrained eye, might look as crazy as driving a piece of machinery across a field for hours just to loosen the top 4 inches of soil. These top performers usually have made these tasks such a part of their routine that they are not aware that they are doing something different than everyone else. The tasks are such a habit that they have become a part of who that person is.

Where in your business or life are there examples of working the ground? Is it taking notes at the weekly sales meeting? Planning your weekly activities? Creating a written to-do list? Reading every morning? Practicing your sales script with passion every day even though you have delivered it a thousand times? Envisioning your results the night before a big event or sales call? Sending birthday cards or thank you notes to clients? Cleaning your desk?

Take 5 minutes right now and create a quick list of small tasks that would help ALL of the seeds you plant take root.

Be Free!

Tom Weber
Instructor