(As I and my family are celebrating Thanksgiving Week, here is one of my favorite previous posts.  Happy Thanksgiving Week to you and yours!)

“Is it half-full, or half-empty?”  My mentor asked me that a few years ago while showing me a bottle of water.  Considering myself to be a positive person, I said, “Half-full.”  He then told me that the bottle was actually TOTALLY FULL: half-full of water, and half-full of air!

This silly – but true – example actually has a lot of depth.  For today’s purpose, here is a takeaway.  As I am writing this, it is the week of Thanksgiving.  Many of you in sales or recruiting could be saying to yourself something like, “Why bother talking to prospects between now and the end of the year?  After all, starting this week most people will be focusing on turkey, football games, buying (and wrapping) presents, and parties.”  Though that is the case for many people, consider the following facts from the other side of the coin:

• This is one of the few times a year that people are happy to open their wallets.
• This is the time of year that people are looking for ideas of items to give as gifts (like maybe a product or service that you represent).
• Many people – due to the excitement of the holidays – are more positive and enthusiastic than usual.
• Many people start looking forward to the new year, with thoughts of how to make next year better than this one.

If you truly want to be successful in your career, you will need to decide to be different than your competition. Most of them basically go into a cruise control mode the last 6 or 7 weeks of the calendar year.  You are better than that!  You are choosing to continue to work your plan with a strong Sense of Urgency while your competition parties the rest of the year.

Any of the items listed above would make for a good prospect.  The challenge is: who will be the wise business person (insert Your Name here) to talk with these prospects between now and the end of December?  My experience has shown that the people who continue to work their business in these last few weeks of the year are the ones who usually build huge businesses (or make huge sales) in the first quarter of the following calendar year.

So, the choice is yours: you can choose to let the rest of the year go by without making any true effort to build your business, or you can choose to focus the rest of the year unlike anytime in your life, and most likely create a large wave of momentum going into next year.

I am sure that you will make the correct choice.