Never mistake motion for action.
—Ernest Hemingway

We all have pressures that make us desperately want to grow our business. When looking for ways to grow our revenue, it is tempting to measure the activities of salespeople. But it’s far more important to measure their strategies.

For example, I once was brought in to run a sales organization in a company that sold multimillion-dollar supercomputers for which there was a market of about ten very large companies with names such as Intel. One of the first things I did was ask my salespeople to show me their account plans. They said they did not have any account plans. The previous vice president of sales had told them, “It’s a numbers game. I want you making five cold calls per day.” Who else besides those ten large companies did he think was going to buy a supercomputer? Did he really believe the salespeople could dial random people in the phone directory and find someone who would answer the phone and say, “Sure, I could totally use a supercomputer for my business, right now. That would be like, totally radical, dude! Charge it to my Amex.” It was a lot easier for that sales executive to measure sales activity than the quality and soundness of the sales strategy.

The reality is, it is always easier to measure activity than strategy. Developing and practicing sales methods and strategies are not easy endeavors. But, they have a far larger influence on success than sheer effort.

Effort is really important—if you have a winning strategy and a winning action plan.

Rather than focusing on measuring effort, use these tactics to grow your sales:

Effort without strategy is like wind without a sail. Effort is easy. Strategy is hard. Focus on the strategy first, execution second. Focus on delivering value, rather than looking for it. But even then focus on the method, not the effort.