After having traveled as much as I’ve done the past many years, things begin to get into a nice, familiar routine. As stated a time or two in these posts, I tend to spend the first week to 10 days at my home office planning, scheduling and generally preparing to go out on the road for the remainder of the month.

Here are some of the activities I do to get ready for life on the road at the beginning of each month. Would love to hear you weigh in on things you might do as well.

• Receive an email with my assignments from the home office. Basically this is a list of buyers, prospective buyers, and others that we need to have some sort of face time with.
• I sort the list based upon geographical region contact is located in. Then I sort based upon priority. Does a particular client need me sooner rather than later? Does a prospect have demands that cause them to move up my list on when to visit? That sort of thing.
• Once my list is set, I then go about creating a travel plan. I have learned that some of the online travel/social sites can be a true benefit in this process. I started using Dopplr a couple of months ago (as you might be able to see with that widget-thing on the right side of the page).
• With a general itinerary set, I go about booking my actual flight travel, the business hotels I’ll stay at during the journey, and if I need a rental car I book those in advance as well.
• With travel needs taken care of, I then make sure I’ve got my toiletries in order. It is much easier and about 80% less expensive to make sure I don’t have to buy that stuff while on the road. I get that the businesses selling supplies to travelers are making a profit, but at the same time there is a lot of gouging going on for that bit of convenience. Don’t like that!
• Finally, I start to pack clothing, books, etc. If you’ve ever traveled extensively, you know that it can be hard to carry a lot more than a weeks worth of clean clothes. One of my little tricks is to make sure I have plenty of white under t-shirts as that can often allow me to wear a dress shirt 2 or 3 times prior to needing it laundered. This allows me to usually not have to have laundry done. The great things about most hotels, however, is they are right there should I need a shirt cleaned and pressed. This usually comes after a spill of some sort

I’ll leisurely move through the above list during the first week of the month. Once all is in order, I head out on the road and start providing my clients the best services I can. At this point, it’s all old hat to me. Would love to hear how you plan and prepare for your extended journeys. Have a great month!

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