(reading time 4 mins)

I was asked this question by a prospective client who was interviewing me to be their business coach, and I thought, “What a great question!” I used to work in a corporate sales environment, and was often given the advice: “Look at what the top salespeople are doing, and do what they’re doing.” Okay, that might be a somewhat simplistic piece of advice, but it does make a lot of sense. We don’t want to imitate others, because then we’re not genuine, but we do want to observe and learn from the most successful people, and work out how to apply what we see to our own business practices. I think this is what my prospective client was trying to do, which I applaud.

Fortunately, in contrast perhaps to some of the other questions I attempt to answer in this blog series, this is a pretty straightforward question to answer. In fact, I think about this subject all the time, and I am always sharing with some of my clients who want to achieve faster and better results, the behaviours and characteristics of those of my clients who are achieving greater success.

So let’s just keep it direct and simple. Here is a bulleted list, in no particular order of importance, of the behaviours that can be seen in my clients who achieve far greater success than others. And, in case you were wondering, none of them have anything to do with the business they’re in, the market they operate in, or how long they’ve been in business.

My most successful clients:

  1. Attend every coaching session, on time, read to work, with phones off and no other distractions. When they can’t attend a scheduled session, they proactively get in touch with me to re-schedule it.
  2. Attend every 90-day planning workshop. When they can’t attend, they still allocate a dedicated day to setting their 90-day goals and writing their action plan. They give their action plans the time and attention they deserve.
  3. Are always doing the reading, training, and learning required to grow whatever particular skill is required to achieve their current #1 goal.
  4. Get their team to do the same.
  5. Complete their ‘focus sheet’ each week. A focus sheet is a simple one-page tool that, well, basically does what it says on the tin. It keeps them accountable and focused on the highest priority tasks that they will be working on in any given week.
  6. Have an up-to-date dashboard containing the key numbers in their business; KPI’s and financial trends that indicate the health of the business and the measurements of any strategies that they are currently implementing. We look at and discuss these numbers every time we meet, even if only for a few minutes.
  7. Work a minimum of five hours per week, every week, on the highest priorities in their business – not operational, day-to-day, transactional work – but working ‘on’ the business to grow and improve it.
  8. Religiously follow their ‘default diary.’ If you don’t know what a default diary is, feel free to get in touch with me.
  9. Don’t make excuses.
  10. Have fun, and don’t take life too seriously.
  11. Stick with it, for at least five years, recognising that success doesn’t happen overnight, that for our business to grow and get better, we first must grow and get better, and that takes time.
  12. Recognise, track and record their successes and growth journey over time.

And that’s pretty much it. I have looked closely at my top three clients – I love all my clients, but you know what I mean; my top three clients in terms of how much they have achieved during the time they’ve worked with me – and this list of twelve characteristics/behaviours are common across all of them.

If you want to adapt the strategy of “Look at what the most success people are doing, and do what they do,” I would start with this list.

Find out more about what ActionCOACH can do for your business. Or if you simply have a question about something you’ve read here, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Email me at andrewgoldberg@actioncoach.com.