You already know the answer, don’t you? It’s both. But, I suggest as you try to do both, start by focusing on smarter… and then build in harder. If you do it the other way, you might end up making a lot of noise but not making a lot of progress (like a race car revving its engine while the wheels are not on the ground).
To focus on “smarter,” pay attention to your Quality Calls. Quality calls are things like meeting a new prospect to do a needs analysis or meeting with a current customer to talk about performance of a solution you recently implemented. Quality calls can be in person, on the phone, or done using something like Skype or GoToMeeting. There are other examples of quality calls beyond the two given here, but they are not things like checking in to see how the customer is doing or dropping off something you promised to get to them. It’s not that you should never do these things, but you shouldn’t count them as quality calls.
Look back on your calendar over the last two weeks and count how many quality calls you have completed. Then, commit to doing the smart and hard thing. Focus on increasing your quality calls in the next two weeks, and watch for the payoff!
For a simple summary of what qualifies as a quality call, click here.
