I used to accuse my daughter of prevarication whenever she avoiding doing something that she needed to do. However, she was not prevaricating, she was procrastinating. I was never really sure of the difference so here are their respective definitions.
Prevarication is the act of avoiding telling the truth or speaking or acting evasively to deceive. It can involve being vague, delaying an answer or skirting around the truth.
Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks, often in favour of more enjoyable or less demanding activities.
She was definitely procrastinating. She puts off tasks as long as she can, in the hope that someone else will do them for her, I think. I will refrain from commenting as to whether she is successful!
However, she is not the only one who does this. I am regularly faced with clients who want to do some sales related training but need to finish other things first. The problem is, something always seems to come along that is more important and the training is never done.
It has been quite refreshing in the last few weeks to have people come to me with their problem and the desire to fix it as soon as possible. Sales are the life blood of a company. Without revenue, do you even have a business? If there is a problem with sales, then there is a problem in the company and it needs to be fixed.
Sales training and consulting delivers massive returns for any company. The cost is minimal, even for small companies, but the value is enormous. It is typically paid for with just one new sale and tens of sales can be impacted almost immediately making a significant difference to revenue, cash flow and company profitability. What good reason do you have to delay it?
These sorts of comments are regularly made to me:
· “We are too busy doing…”
· “We just need to do this first…”
· “I just need to wait for this to happen…”
Really? Is anything more important that building a sales pipeline that will deliver future revenue and keep your company going? Sales training can be done in a day or in hourly sessions. It is easy to schedule if you really want to.
Fortunately for me, I have had a number of companies come to me recently with the recognition that they need help and wanting to make a change. I an looking forward to helping them over the next few months.