Whether you work inside or as a field sales person, managing your time is crucial to managing your success. In fact, along with attitude, time management for salespeople is one of the key elements that will have an impact on one’s ability to maximize results and enjoyment in your career.
This post is inspired by a book I recently completed that was authored by Jill Konrath entitled “More Sales, Less Time”. You should get a copy or listen to it on Audible.
Here are three ideas that can help you squeeze more productivity out of your work week and create definitive long lasting results in your sales career.
1. Turn Off The Distractions
In today’s crazy busy world, it’s easy to be distracted from the tasks that you need to complete in order to be successful. The easiest way to remove these distractions from your life and your work life is to turn them off. That’s easier said than done, so you need to know where to start and when to start in order to be successful.
Let’s start with your smartphone. It’s easy enough to turn your phone notifications from standard to vibrate, or vibrate to silence, but what’s harder to do is to turn your phone notifications off completely. As with everything, start slowly and build to the point where you don’t need your phone. The easiest way to start is to set your phone on silent during your key working hours and then take regular breaks to check your phone. Ideally, your phone should be in a drawer during your key work time blocks so you won’t be tempted to check it, but silent mode is a good start. If your mobile phone is your key connectivity tool where prospects can reach you then turn off all notifications except for phone calls (as other communication methods need not be checked until you have time).
On your desktop turn off all notifications. That’s as simple as going into your Chrome browser, reviewing the notifications panel and deleting all the notifications. This way while you’re focused on your work you won’t be distracted by those annoying notification pop-ups that are constantly pinging you during your workday. I mean really do you need to know that your aunt just sent you an email or Facebook message? How is that going to help you achieve your quota or move the needle in getting to your next bonus level?
Also on your desktop, you probably have 6, 8, 9 tabs open in your browser, of which half do not relate to you being productive when in the field. Remove those tabs from your startup function in your browser so that you don’t see them and are not tempted to click, leading you down the black hole of your personal email, ESPN, the Bleacher Report, CNN, or any other type of distracting site.
The Space app helps tremendously with time management for salespeople.
Okay, now your phone is on silent and the notifications on your desktop are off. So most of the distractions from your workday or gone, except one – your smartphone. It’s probably sitting right next to you when you’re sitting at your desk and it’s tempting to check it when you’ve got a free moment, just to see what’s going on. Break yourself from this habit by using a reporting app which tells you how many times you look at your phone or how many times you open an app. I’ve been using the app with tremendous success. The Space App tells me how much time I’m spending on my phone how often I’ve unlocked it and I have the ability to throttle up or throttle down that usage as necessary.
2. Organize Your Week Into Theme Days
Throughout your work and personal day, there are three types of activities that we do. Those that will help us achieve our objectives, those that support our objectives and something in between. In the sales business, this means that there are money days (activities where we’re making money or actively trying to make money), days where we’re doing activities that support money days, and transition days which are between money days and support days.
Objectively, every day in sales should be a money day. Realistically, we can only have 60 to 70% of our time focused on money day activities as we will always need to have transition and administrative tasks days to support our ongoing money day activities. So how do we move to this place we’re 60 to 70% of our work week is focused on money day activities?
First, we make a list of what we consider to be our money day activities. For inside and outside sales professionals, money day activities likely relate to anything that moves a prospect forward in the sales cycle or generates revenue for you and your company. For an individual producer, a money day activity could include prospecting calls, pre-call planning, prospect and customer meetings.
Any other activity or task not on this initial money day list is not a money day activity. For example, entering data into your CRM or preparing presentations for prospects are not money day activities. They are, however, important administrative tasks that need to be completed in order for you to be able to have more money day activities. These are good examples of transition activities.
Administrative tasks such as completing expense reports, internal memos to team members, customer service matters and any internal team building activities are administrative tasks. They’re not activities that will generate revenue for you, your company or your team.
For sales managers and leaders, money day activities include coaching individual producers, completing one on one weekly and monthly reviews with producers, recruiting and sourcing new candidates for your team.
So to increase your productivity, list all of the items and tasks that you do weekly every month, and then classify them into the three categories money days, transition days and administration days. Designate 2 out of 5 days a week to be your money days, one day to be administration day and 2 transition days. Now that you’ve got your schedule and you know which tasks are to be completed on which days, you’re ready to start focusing on those activities that make you money.
Over the ensuing 90 days, transition your daily activity type such that you’ve moved to 3 money days a week instead of 2, with 1 transition and administration day each. If you’re successful and moving to this schedule then you’ll find you’re doing 60 to 70% of your weekly schedule on money day activities that generate revenue for you and your company.
3. Leverage The Power Of Time Blocking
Ever notice how on the day before you leave for vacation you seem to be able to get everything that’s been hanging over you for the past few weeks done? This is a demonstration of the power of time blocking.
Time blocking is the most powerful weapon that you have in your sales arsenal. It creates the ability for you to focus on one or two activities during a certain block of time. More importantly, it communicates to your fellow co-workers that during your time block you are only focused on that activity and will accept no other distractions.
I’ve been using time blocking for over 20 years and didn’t really fully understand or appreciate the value until a few years ago. Instead of giving yourself all day to make your prospecting calls, do it in 30 minutes or an hour. You’ll be amazed at the results (somehow it will all get done).
The length and duration of your time block will depend on your ability to focus on one activity for a specific period of time and the number of different activities you need to complete each day. If you’re a field sales rep, going out into the field and meeting customers and prospects on your money day activities are imperative. Time block these meetings in a specific period and get them done within that time frame. If you’re an outbound SDR and you need to make 60 calls a day, break the call sessions into two 30 call sessions and complete them within a reasonable time.
You can create time blocks for all kinds of activities. Use time blocks to help you with activities such as completing expense reports, filing field activity reports, building prospect presentations, quotes, basic account research or pre call planning. Once you unleash the power of time blocking you’ll come to appreciate and understand how effective it is in compressing the amount of work that you have into the time that you have available. With time blocking you’ll have more time for your work, more time for your family, and more time for yourself.
In Conclusion
Did you turn off the distractions, identify your key activities that will move the revenue needle, and block your time to execute on those activities? If so, then the sky is the limit as you’ll become personally and professionally so productive that people will wonder how you did it all in such a short period of time.
What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below!
