Time is Your Most Valuable Asset

A lot of elements factor into a successful sales career. In my opinion, the most important factor, by far, is management of your time.

Time Never Stops

The clock is constantly running and can’t be turned back. Time spent is gone forever. Time wasted is opportunity lost. In sales, time optimization is a skill understood and employed by top producers.

Manage Your Time

Here are a few tips to get control of your time and set the stage for increase sales, income, and status and career success.

Document

Keep a diary of your time. It doesn’t matter what you use to document how you spend your time. It is most important to get as detailed as possible. The more you document over the longest period, the better you will be able to get an accurate picture of how you spend your time. If you are like most salespeople, you will be taken back by all of the wasted time. Wasted time is opportunity lost.

Categorize

After you complete your diary, one or more days of activities, the first thing you should do is to categorize the things you did. Make a list. Put things in categories, by type. Prioritize each category and sort them in order from most important to least important. Hint: My most important activity is receiving deposits for signed sales orders. If you can do it in an Excel spreadsheet it will be easier to manipulate the list.

Prioritize

Begin to schedule your time according to you priority list. As a sales professional, any opportunity you have to be in front of a qualified prospect making a sale takes priority over everything else in your day. As a rule of thumb, if you can choose between checking your e-mail and making a sales call, in person, you know what to do. More often than not, the e-mail will not produce revenue, the sales presentation can.

Prime Selling Hours

Prime selling hours are the hours your prospective customer is available to meet with you and buy your products or services. Honor prime selling hours by doing non-selling tasks during non-prime selling time. When I called on hospital purchasing departments, prime selling hours were 7:00 AM to 3:30 PM. Hospital purchasing agents and buyers were available to meet and buy things during those hours. At 3:31 PM they went home. So, prime selling hours were easy to understand and honor. What amazed me was the number of empty seats in the purchasing waiting room in the early morning. What are prime selling hours in your business?

Geography

Long drives, between sales calls, used to be completely dead time. When cassette tape players became available we gained the option of listening to training or motivational tapes. It let us learn something while driving. When cell phones were introduced, the car became an extension of the office. I make most of my business calls in the car, on my cell phone, while driving from call to call, meeting to meeting. If I could keep only one tool of the trade it would be my cell phone. Still, in spite of the improvements in the tools of the trade, it is imperative to schedule your appointments with drive times in mind. Sometimes it isn’t possible to do, but I recommend that your make an effort to clump your calls together for drive time efficiency. Since you are the one asking for the appointments, ask for a day and time that is most convenient for you. More often than not, your prospect or customer will accommodate you.

Take Charge

Conquer and control your time and optimize this essential tool of success. As a professional salesperson, effective time management is your most valuable personal asset.

Next Time:

Another high value professional asset…