Rocket Fuel - Time Management: a salesperson's best friend
This week, I would like to talk a little bit about time management. Now, time management is a salesperson’s best friend. And the reason I say this is that it’s one of the big conversations I have with a lot of salespeople from all sorts of industries: “Julie, we'd love to do this but we don't have time.”
Hi, everyone. Julie here from the Sales Ace, bringing you another sales tip to help skyrocket your business. And this week, I would like to talk a little bit about time management.
Now, time management is a salesperson’s best friend.
And the reason I say this is that it’s one of the big conversations I have with a lot of salespeople from all sorts of industries: “Julie, we'd love to do this but we don't have time.”
And the sorts of things that get pushed out are new business development, the picking up the phone, if that's part of their job role (particularly, if they're not that comfortable with it): it gets pushed to one side.
But really, the trick with anything within the role of things that you need to do to be successful in the sales role is to manage your time, to block out the diary.
And this is why when I work with a lot of new people coming into sales, I always give them a structure to their day or their week to follow, because what it then does is it starts getting them in the habit of what they need to do to ensure that they cover all of the bases to become successful.
So an example of one of those is when I'm working with people who are in an internal sales role and they’re outbound calling, key times, key elements of times depending on industry sectors (and some of you watching this might say to me that's not the right time for me) but just go with me on this, key calling times 10 to 12, 2 to 4 Monday to Friday, which then allows a little bit of time in the morning to pick up emails, do some admin tasks.
After 12 o'clock, you got an hour for lunch. You might have to do some more admin tasks or some research to be able to do your calls for the afternoon, afternoon calls 2 to 4, 4 to 5/5:30 when they go home. That's the time for more admin, quotes, customer emails or things like that, but it's a structure.
And what it then does, is overtime instils the discipline in that person in that role that at 10 to 12, 2 to 4 are the times that they need to be on the phone.
You might be watching this and thinking well that wouldn't work for me. So that's absolutely fine. My question is, what would? If you want to do something, you need to get it in your diary. You need to structure your week, you need to stand back and look at your week and think about what works for you.
Sales reps on the road, traditionally Monday mornings used to be working in the office or working from home on admin days, they’d be doing their reports… Monday afternoon, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday out on the road. Maybe Friday, morning out in the road or Fridays all day in the office, booking their appointments for the following week, quotes, catchups, whatever.
That was the structure for a sales rep, and when they're out on the road, two to three appointments a day used to be what we worked to.
So here's the thing: if you want to be successful in sales, you need to ensure that you are prospecting, you need to make sure that you have sales-generating activities in your day.
Then make sure you get them in the diary.
So there we go. That's the sales tip for this week!
If you have any subject that you would like me to cover off in any of these, please email me julie@thesalesace.co.uk
I'll catch up with you soon!
