The Power of the Simple Diary

Our everyday world is more and more reliant on technology. So much so that on our way home from work we can tell our freezers to make more ice, the Roomba to clean and tell our house/apt to turn on the lights and air conditioning so we are welcomed to a level of comfort unimaginable just one generation ago.

And as we wrangle with our next big “scary” step forward into the world of AI, I wanted to take an equally big step backwards to a much simpler world of information and data collection and talk about the importance of the sales Diary!!

Now, this is not a new thing at all and there are many articles written on the importance of keeping a journal/diary. However, I wanted to give my unique angle, experience on this and how it helped me track, grow and succeed in the extremely tough world of Retail FX sales.

I’ve been in the Forex industry for 16 years and over the course of that time I’ve experienced soul-crushing  lows and exhilarating highs. But in my early years, I struggled to maintain consistency, and consistency is really the key to long term success.

It wasn’t till I had a very frank conversation with my wife on a bitterly cold day in NYC. While on an afternoon walk to our neighborhood park, she asked me what my goals were sales wise?  I said I wanted to make 20k a month. She said that’s fantastic but, “how are you going to achieve this goal when you’re currently averaging 2- 5k?”

I didn’t have a good answer to this question, “I’ll just work harder” I said. And from the following conversation I mapped out how I would not just reach this goal but also learn vital lessons on being successful and happy.

A little background information on my wife. She has an MBA from Cornell University and has worked for companies such as Bloomberg, Google and Business Insider so I was smart enough to listen to her advice. She said you must start from the very beginning in the sense that you need to start tracking where your business is coming from, who your current clients are, who your potential accts are and what your goals are.

The next day I found myself a diary I received at a trade show from a payment provider at that time and on the 18^th of August 2013, I started my journey.

It was a simple beginning, listing that I needed to follow up with my existing IB’s and self-directed accounts. I reminded myself to speak with a potential client, email my current live accounts and touch base with potential clients i.e. leads.

The next month I expanded the Information to list all my current and potential clients. This visual aid helped me see just how many clients I had. Which was a stark reminder that I really didn’t have a strong book of business… but always showing my overall goal of 20k per month!

*It’s important to not delude yourself, especially when first starting off. Sales of any kind is difficult!

The next month I continued to write down my current and potential clients, but I also started giving a theme for each new month like…March Madness, May day, Action August and strong September. 

This small adage helped me every day understand exactly what my current situation was. i.e. “May Day” was a time when I had very little business and it reminded me every day that I had to do the work!!. 

*It’s important to have a constant visual cue to keep you on point on your mission.

I then started adding additional goals to my diary each month. First it was fitness oriented like losing 5lbs and being able to run 5 miles. Once I started doing this something amazing happened. I was not just focused on work but also improving my overall being. 

Again, there’s been a lot of documented reports that the more you respect and try to improve yourself the more your business/personal life also improves.

The next important milestone was when I listed the following headline for the month of February 2014:

                                                    “Feb – Focus – Fitness – Fuck yeah”

I started noticing more new and potential clients being added and suddenly I could see that all of my hard work had started to really build my sales pipeline. It has also given me structure. My sales diary started giving other benefits like the ability to look back on my sales growth. It showed me multiple lessons like the importance of staying in contact with my clients and not wasting time on the ones who didn’t. 

The process of continually doing this over many months gave me the ability to see my personal and professional growth but most importantly it showed me that the sales process is not linear but a roller coaster.

*You don’t always win at sales but if you believe in the process the success will come!

I still use the same diary to this day. It has every single lead, contact and new client information that I have made over the past 16 years and I still use it every day.

In a world where everything seems to be online or in the cloud my experience has been that the good old pen and paper has more far reaching applications than its simplicity implies.

Download a demo account at Tradeview Markets and experience the benefits of journaling for yourself. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to enhance your trading skills. Sign up now!”

Author: Ben Sadgrove

COO at Tradeview Markets

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bensadgrove/