📄 Hit launch, or pre-flight checklist?

Some things you can do on the fly, and others are best done with a recipe, system, or process.

Take the humble checklist for instance, in the case of aviation.

A good pilot - the kind that tends to survive flying - doesn't take off unless they've run through a checklist of items.

For instance:

• Auxiliary fuel pump — Off
• Flight controls — Free and correct
• Instruments and radios — Checked and set
• Parking brake — Off
• Doors and windows — Locked

You can imagine that there's no big disaster if you try and take off with the parking brake still engaged - but if you fail to lock doors and windows, you could see everyone and their luggage sucked into the skies.

So whenever you step off a plane and no aviation disaster occurred, thank the humble checklist.

And checklists are a very common - and functionally vital - part of many business processes and operations.

So, why wouldn't you use one?

Especially when it comes to your most vital, life-giving activity in your business: working your pipeline, and generating the opportunities and sales that you want and that your business needs?

From my observations over the years, coaches and consultants - but also executives as well as sales reps - are generally terrible, at being systematic in how they track and develop the opportunities in their business.

But if you don't have a system - an effective, repeatable approach - how are you going to be effective and efficient?

How are you going to ensure that all your deals move forward, and that you land the clients you deserve?

If your best approach is to cherry-pick a deal from your pipeline, to send a half-assed "just following up!" message, and you don't log that activity?

Guess what: you'll be sending that person another three of those over time, and they'll ghost you for the rest of your life. Gee, I wonder why that pipeline is stuck.

Instead, you want to approach your pipeline and your deals in a reflective, methodical, thoughtful way.

If you want to move deals forward with your buyers, you'll need to spend time in thoughtful reflection, so that your messaging and questioning is relevant and helpful to them.

And the very first question to always ask yourself, for any deal at any stage in your pipeline, is this question.