Life Skills > Selling Skills
By Jeff Bajorek
Why do some sales pros seem to do twice as much with their time as everyone else? It’s because they’ve got a handle on the skills most of us avoid but they probably aren’t the ones you think.
I made my annual pilgrimage to Austin, TX, for the Sales Success Summit last October. It’s a passionate group of professionals who are all there because they want to be, and it’s like a Homecoming for me.
Being among all of these top performers, something dawned on me…
Top sales pros aren’t separated by their sales skills; they’re separated by their life skills.
We like to talk about selling skills—negotiation, cold calling, presentations. But what if those aren’t what separates the great from the good?
The truth is, the real difference lies in life skills: time management, clarity, and discipline. These don’t get any attention because they aren’t glamorous or fun.
Important is not the same as urgent
I was sitting in the first row of the theater, watching one of the speakers lay out their weekly routine.
Their calendar wasn’t a chaotic patchwork of meetings and deadlines. It was deliberate and purposeful. Each block of time was an investment in what mattered most: work, relationships, and health.
Time blocks for deep work, exercise, returning calls and emails, and even specific time to spend with their spouse. No ridiculously early wake-up calls, and no burning the midnight oil.
It wasn’t just the simplicity of their calendar but the calm confidence it projected. It wasn’t just time management—it was clarity of purpose.
What also struck me was… wait for it… every day had a defined beginning and an end. There wasn’t a hamster wheel in sight!
That made me rethink how, in the minds of most salespeople, everything seems more urgent than it is.
This is a cultural thing. I remember that early in my sales career; I’d check my Blackberry obsessively (I’m dating myself here, and I still miss that keyboard), half-convinced that every notification was a crisis waiting to unfold. In hindsight, it wasn’t urgency—it was insecurity, a need to prove I was ‘on it.
How many mental calories do you burn worrying about stuff that just isn’t that damn important?
Much more recently, I was catching up with a VP I used to work for. He confirmed what I had been thinking.
“They set better goals, have clear priorities, and make the most of their time because they value it. They have a plan for each interaction- they know the difference between a sales call and just a visit. They maintain their integrity and understand the need to recharge the batteries so they can continue to function at a high level.”
Selling skills are finite. There aren’t so many of them that they give you a competitive advantage. It’s tough to hide total incompetence anymore. Not that there aren’t still some fools out there, but most people either figure it out or self-select out of the profession.
Your competitive advantage is creating the routines and disciplines you set for yourself so you can use those selling skills most effectively.
Cold calling skills mean nothing if you don’t protect time to call. Being able to do a world-class presentation doesn’t mean much if you don’t get enough at-bats. It doesn’t matter how well you negotiate if you’re burned out and not in the right frame of mind to see the bigger picture.
In a world where there’s never enough time, these top performers seem to create more of it for themselves. They don’t have magic powers or a genie in the bottle. They maximize the impact they make with the time they have.
That clarity about what truly matters is the foundation, but it’s the tedious, day-to-day grind where the magic happens.
Really good at the boring stuff
You’ve been selling long enough to realize that the dopamine hits that come with important sales meetings require a grind to get them. That work isn’t demoralizing so much as it’s… boring.
Showing up every day and doing the mundane can be frustrating. It takes a lot of time and isn’t usually directly connected to what makes you feel successful.
It’s easy to feel like you’ve earned your way out of it, that it’s someone else’s job, or that it can be foregone altogether.
Like, “Isn’t there a virtual assistant somewhere who can do this for me? I should be tending to the big important stuff.”
But the work needs to be done. It’s not just the calls, the emails, the follow-ups. That stuff at least feels tangible.
It’s the little things that seem unimportant. It’s about staying prepared, learning your tools, and setting yourself up for success tomorrow. These small tasks are easy to ignore, but they set you up for success in a big way.
It’s getting set for your day the night before, so you can hit the ground running. It’s keeping your CRM up to date and learning what that new software update can really do for your phone.
Sometimes, you just need to sit still, not to chase an outcome but to create space for your purpose to emerge.
This is not sexy
This is what it takes to succeed.
And you’re probably telling yourself you don’t have the space for it.
The kids need a ride to practice, and dinner needs to hit the table. Those weights won’t lift themselves, and don’t you have a pile of books stacking up on your nightstand?
Life comes at you fast, and headline-grabbing stuff seems to be what you should prioritize, but for every glowing marquee, someone had to build the sign, run the wiring, and connect the power.
Don’t be above the boring stuff. Lean into it.
The work isn’t glamorous, but these habits free your mental bandwidth for what actually counts—closing deals, building relationships, and driving results.
Crystal clear
I saw a video recently of Nick Saban talking about discipline. He’s a legendary college football coach who built a powerhouse program full of 18-21-year-old kids where the biggest difference between fourth place in your division and a National Championship was simple execution.
“Self-discipline comes down to these two things:
Something you know you’re supposed to do that you really don’t want to do. Can you make yourself do it?
Something you know you’re not supposed to do, but you really want to. Can you keep yourself from it?”
Coach Saban’s philosophy on discipline isn’t just for athletes. It’s the same for sales pros: success hinges on consistently doing the hard, unglamorous things others avoid.
This means doing the prospecting work you dread or skipping that pointless meeting you’d rather attend than focus on actual work. It’s about turning discipline into a habit so you don’t have to fight your willpower every day.
How many of those “things you’re supposed to do” can you build into your routine so you don’t even have to think about them?
How many of those “things you know you’re not supposed to do” can you eliminate entirely from your periphery?
It’s one of the reasons I think working from home is overrated. If you don’t have clear boundaries, it makes it difficult to stay focused. When there’s a place for work and a place for the rest of your life, you can be a lot more productive and fulfilled in both locations (but that’s a can of worms I’ll open at another time).
When you’re driven to succeed, and there’s a clear path to that success, it’s much easier to make the decisions along that path, even when execution is challenging. When there’s alignment between what you are driven to do and what needs to be done, there’s far less decision fatigue.
Every notification, email, or random task feels urgent when your path to success is unclear. That’s when you start looking for shortcuts—like another sales book promising the secret to closing deals.
It’s not about closing; it’s about clarity…
I recently started a journaling practice. I fought it for a long time, but I’ve found it incredibly helpful for keeping me on track.
I have a handful of daily goals that tie back to my weekly objectives, and in a page or less, I either check those off (or don’t) and jot down a few of my prevalent feelings from throughout the day.
The discipline is making sure I review the page every morning and jot down my thoughts in the evening, which also creates, you guessed it, a clear beginning and end to my day.
I often take for granted how the simple stuff can make such a huge impact. Those boundaries have been more valuable than I thought.
Journaling is helping me slow down, acknowledge what’s working, and confront what isn’t. It’s giving me a framework to reflect, reset, and refocus.
It’s simple, and it’s been transformative.
I also get to review and revise on a weekly basis, so I’m never going too long without a gut check on what’s the right thing to do.
What’s next?
Ok, so where do you start? We’re supposed to read more, exercise more, eat better, meditate, sleep 8+ hours a night, and be incredibly attentive parents…How many of these “life skills” can you adopt before you’re doing anything but work? ‘
That’s an essential question with a simple answer: start with one.
You don’t need to fix everything overnight. Pick one skill, one area where you can gain clarity or discipline, and commit to it. Pick something small. It could be a daily walk, a consistent bedtime, or a simple morning routine. Build that habit until it feels automatic, then layer in another.
Success isn’t about massive overhauls but consistent, incremental growth. Once you see the results, you’ll be ready to take on the next.
I’d suggest getting clear on what you want out of your life.
What are your big-picture goals and dreams? What do you want to create for yourself? How does your career contribute to those goals? What might you have to sacrifice to attain them?
It’s okay if you don’t have complete clarity on that. While some of my closest friends and family do, I’ll be among the first to admit that I don’t yet. Let that be your prompt (and mine) and permission to spend some time thinking about it. A clear direction is vital to your success and relationships, even if the final destination is unclear.
I hate to break it to you, but there aren’t many top-performing salespeople who are also club champion golfers, world-class parents, and reality-tv-show-class home cooks. You can be one or two of those things, but not all of them.
That’s a lesson I wish I had learned way before I did.
Once you’re clear on your goals, break them down into action steps and make sure you’re executing against them every week. You’ll build habits, gain efficiencies, and see better results.
That goal-setting action will become an indispensable part of your routine, and you’ll have more space to add something else (maybe exercise or meditation) to help you take that next step.
Once you feel like you’ve got one down, add another and then another. After a while, the fog begins to lift. Your path to success comes into focus, step by step, until it’s clear that the only thing standing between you and your goals is the choice to take that next step.
What has challenged me significantly in the past was being spoiled with enough natural talent to believe that I could be very good at a lot of things. I can be, but not nearly as great as if I’d narrow that list down. That’s what I’m working on now and what I’d suggest you start with as well.
So, let’s go back to where we started… why do some sales pros seem to get twice as much done with their time?
They master the life skills others overlook—because they know the path to success is built one focused step at a time.
What’s your next step?
Start small, stay focused, and watch the path to success illuminate itself.
Jeff Bajorek is a sales consultant who helps sales teams design and implement their sales strategies with a focus on the fundamentals, and by noticing what others don't.
Website: www.jeffbajorek.com