Time is life
Each day comes with a 24-hour package, distributed equally to everyone. It is up to us to make the most of the 24 hours of each day that are given to all of us. There is so much to do and so little time is the common complaint these days. Within these 24 hours we have to work, sleep, take care of our body and mind, take care of our families, pursue our hobbies, and keep our mothers-in-law in a good mood. We have to use these hours to grow, produce and progress through proper time management. Managing the fixed quota 24 hours effectively leads to fulfilling all our responsibilities and improves our quality of personal and professional life. When properly managed, time produces the greatest returns on energy invested.
For sales professionals, time is money. They are not paid in terms of the number of hours worked, to “hit a clock.” They are paid to produce results: sales results through sales numbers. Therefore, it is imperative that sales professionals manage their time properly and make the most of it. Time management is a critical skill for professional happiness. Your income, your home, all your dreams and aspirations depend on it. Remember, you cannot manage time; all you can do is manage yourself with respect to time.
Time management
The art of time management is based on some simple and proven techniques. Only with practice can it become an ingrained habit that can produce amazing sales results.
o Get Organized: Getting organized is the first step to effective time management. Highly successful marketers have their calendars marked a year in advance. Create an organizer and schedule your tasks according to your top sales priorities. Make a list of things to do. Minutes make an hour, so enter your plans to get things done to the smallest minute. Three minutes to scan the headlines should mean three minutes, not one minute more. Also prepare a record book of the time spent on daily activities. Keep the log book religiously and enter each day’s activities before going to bed. Do a weekly review of this to find out where you are spending/wasting your time and putting that extra time into something worthwhile. Eliminate unproductive activities.
o Visualize your action plan for the whole day. Do it after your morning workout or the night before.
o Delegate tasks to others to save time. Things that can be done by your assistant, subordinates, relatives or others should be handed over to them. Compensate and praise them well and they’ll feel good about entrusting them with the responsibilities of completing a task and earning something extra.
o Don’t procrastinate. He is the greatest thief of time. Get things done as and when scheduled. If possible, “beat deadlines, don’t just try to meet them.”
o Some sales executives take the easy jobs first and keep the hard ones for last. Tackle the difficult tasks first. You may need to do one or two easy tasks to warm up. That’s perfect. But then you should focus on the hard jobs. You will be amazed at how quickly they are done when taken head-on. Then you will have plenty of time for easier tasks.
o Staying away from negative thoughts and negative people is a great time saver. Both can drain energy, reduce productivity, and consume a lot of time. Once you get into the whirlwind of negative thoughts, it will take a considerable time to get out of it. It is absolutely necessary to entertain only positive and good thoughts. It is also advisable to avoid the company of negative people and mix with positive and optimistic people. Stay away from negative thoughts and stay positive.
Use your idle or wait times creatively. As a sales professional, you probably spend a lot of time in your car in traffic to get to your next appointment. Why not use this time to make phone calls to your prospects? We all wait at traffic lights, we wait to meet the managers, we wait to be served our food, we wait for our secretary to finish preparing the report, we wait in lines to pay the bills, etc. Use these tenses creatively to help improve your sales productivity
o The above time saving tips are based more on common sense. There are other tips to save time and improve productivity that are also backed by solid research.
o Analysis of the earnings growth curves of successful sales professionals reveals that it is not important how much total time they spend on sales activities rather than how they allocate their time. Supersalespeople at high-performing financial companies that work with high incentives and stock options spend 40% more time with their best leads and spend an additional 3-4 hours on high-value sales activities than their counterparts at high-value companies. poor financial performance. A Watson Wyatt survey of 841 salespeople at 500 companies with large sales forces has established this. Sales reps at successful companies focus more on identifying customer needs and spend more time with potential customers they meet.
o The survey also finds that high performers spend less time on administrative work, 30% less than low performers. Administrative work should be delegated to administrative staff, the secretary, or kept to a minimum. The best salespeople conduct all non-sales activities between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. decisions.
timing is everything
In sales, timing is everything: what time to make a sales call, what time to make a presentation, when to speak, when to listen, and when to close a sale. It may not require the precision of a scientist, but it does require a good sense of time nonetheless. A superseller knows that there is a right time to meet with the CEO of a company when he or she would be relaxed and receptive. There is also a right time to close a sale without allowing it to be delayed.
There is a time for everything. There is a time to work and a time to rest just as there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. This is the essence of time management. Wise salespeople know this, and they know it well.
