Triage

One of Napoleon's army doctors decided that there had to be a better way to allocate limited medical resources to those wounded in battle than first-come-first-served, or by rank, so he came up with a process he called "triage".

Still used today, a doctor immediately allocates each battle victim into a category based on the severity of his wounds. Those who can be rapidly made sufficiently fit to return to battle are dealt with at once. Those most likely to die, or are too unfit to ever fight again, are dealt with last.

Those in between, who can be healed with time and effort, wait until a doctor is available, or are sent to hospital facilities behind the front lines.

Sounds ruthless, but the common soldier had a better chance of surviving his wounds under this system than under the old officers-first method. And this doctor's process was goal oriented: get them back into battle, or out of the way.

Can you be as ruthless with your prospects?

Go over a list of them, with pencil in hand. Mark an A after each prospect you know you can sell in the next week. Write out the names of these A's as your "Action list".

If you have them in a database or spreadsheet use a separate field for the A's, sort them in it, then print out the A's as your "Action list".

Wait I know you want to dash out and close your A's, but you're not through your triage process.

Go to the other extreme. Take the rest of your prospect list and mark a Z opposite each name that you don't think you'll close in the next 6 months. File these away for awhile.

Categorize your remaining prospects the same way. Those you can close in a month are B; 2 months, C; etc.

Your prospects are now sorted by expected closing periods, and you know who to concentrate on in the next week.

Do this every weekend, by moving B's that are ready for it up into A's, some C's to B's, etc. down the alphabet.

Besides helping to organize your week around your hottest prospects, this system encourages you to reconsider each of them every week in terms of their readiness to close.

And to concentrate on those who are the readiest.

Which has to improve your closing rate.

Triage - To learn more about this author, visit Donald F. Pooley's Website.

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