S5 E3: The #1 Way to Maintain Peak Performance (Isn’t What You Think It Is)

Welcome to OnTarget, the podcast helping software sales leaders drive more pipeline and close transformational deals. I'm your host, Alex Alain. Let's get into it. Welcome to OnTarget.

In this solo episode, we're going to be talking about aligning your ambition with your energy. Now when I think back to some of the earlier years in my career I was completely fueled and obsessed by my drive and ambition. I'd run out every single situation with full speed and I just put my full mind share effort and energy into making myself a winner and into driving the types of results that I wanted to. But what I found is that as my career started to mature and especially as I went from salesperson to sales leader I started to realize more and more the importance of not only managing my time and money, but also my energy.

Because in my early years, with all of that drive and ambition and running at things at just full pace, I felt that I was able to get away with just adrenaline alone. And by using my adrenaline, it really worked. It got me through to the outcomes that I was looking for. But I realized that I wasn't necessarily optimizing my day I was finding that some days I would get to the end of the day and I was just exhausted I was tired I would get some rest and then go again And I managed to figure it out and just about find my way But over those years I started to optimize how I was managing my time better and that helped And then I was optimizing my money better and that helped.

But I wasn't really paying attention to my energy. I was really ignoring energy management. And I realized that was really the path to failure. And that hit me when back in 2017, I faced burnout and that really took me to the edge.

And at that point, I started to learn more and more about the importance of energy and really making sure that I leveraged it to set myself up for long-term sustainable success, which was something I didn't really consider so much earlier in my career. And with that, having really a threat to my overall wellbeing, then would threaten my team success and overall our sales objectives. So I knew that energy management is not just a nice to have or a luxury. It's a necessity to maintain peak performance and really achieve sustainable long-term success.

And so what are some of the critical aspects of energy management? The first step I encourage you to do is an internal energy audit. You really want to understand your own energy patterns throughout the day. Are you someone who's just got more energy and more vigour throughout the morning, like myself.

You know I find myself from first thing in the morning 6am I have a ton of energy I get my high prioritised tasks done at that time And then throughout the rest of the day I do more deprioritized tasks because I know that I have the most energy in the morning Also, you know, for some people, they might eat and then find that they have a bit of a energy dip after they, you know, got a lot of food in their system or whatever the case is. So you've really got to look at yourself and do an audit to say, when do I have the most energy?

What are my foundations of energy so that I can manage it effectively throughout the day? Am I more of a morning person, an evening person? When do I peak? When do I trough?

Just understand that, write that down and take note of it. The second component is really effective prioritization. So now that you've understood exactly where you have the most energy, where it peaks and where it troughs, now you wanna put yourself in a situation where you're doing your highest leverage tasks during your peak energy times. Save the lower leverage tasks and the less creative tasks for when your energy dips so that you know you're doing the high prioritized tasks when you've got energy, when you've got creative spirit and you get those done at those times.

And then when you feel in that dip, you know that the tasks that need to get done then are slightly less important and you can use that lower energy state to get those done because they don't need as much of your mind share and as much of that creative flair potentially. The third component of this is really mastering delegation and you got to get great at this if you want to become a best in class leader Consider delegating those lower leverage tasks right? There's so many sales leaders I find they don't actually leverage this tactic.

You could hire, for example, a virtual assistant. They could, you know, especially if they're abroad, they might be incredibly cost effective. Look at all of the tasks that you have. And if you've got something that's lower leverage and someone can do at least 80% as good as you can for a fractional costs, then why not get them to do it?

And that frees you up both in terms of time, effort and energy. And then it saves you up to only focus on the higher leverage, super important tasks. And so you can use that balance to really find some form of calibration for yourself. If you implement these types of strategies, this can really completely change the game for you and make sure that you feel like you have more energy and more vigor throughout the day, even if you're in a demanding role.

I hope that you found this helpful. If you've got any questions, feel free to drop me a message on LinkedIn and I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thanks for tuning in. Never miss a tactic or actionable insight by subscribing to OnTarget wherever you get your podcasts.

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