Another new year is off to a lightening start. We're already two weeks into 2017. If you made New Year's resolutions, you only have 11 1/2 months left to make them happen. My point: there's no time like TODAY to make the changes that will result in higher revenue for you. How we spend our "billable hours" will be reflected in our paychecks. Time is money, literally.
Sales is a process. We need to put new people into our pipeline daily (prospecting). We need to schedule client needs analysis meetings, where we learn about our client's world. We need to present campaigns designed to meet those needs. These three activities should be done DAILY.
These steps should form the basis of our schedule. If every day of your selling career you had two client needs analysis meetings scheduled and one presentation for annual dollars, how successful would you be? What if you had three client needs analysis meetings scheduled and two presentations for annual dollars?
We also need to allow time for service work: writing presentations, writing orders, following up on results with our clients. These are very important parts of our jobs but, often times, we allow them to take precedence over the three steps that will lead to sales. These service activities should take place before 9:00 AM and after 4:00 PM, or 16:00 for those of you on military time. With today's technology, the ability to return phone calls and answer emails is as close as your phone and you aren't tethered to your desk or office.
The most successful sales people I have worked with also do one other important thing: they set aside a few hours each week to PLAN. These planning sessions are done outside of normal work hours. Choose a time that works for you, a time you can be uninterrupted for a couple of hours to think strategically.
- What short term, intermediate and long-term items do you need to work on? What time will you set aside to do so?
- Which projects will give you the highest return on time invested? When will you schedule them?
- Which projects are the most important to your boss? Do them now!
- Were there items on last week's action list that you did not get done and need to move to this week? Place them on your daily planner.
- Are there other things I have not considered that will give me long-term, significant results? Think about the next quarter, upcoming seasons, new categories of business.
The best time-management experts in the world can only give you techniques to make better use of your billable hours. It's up to you to adopt these techniques and turn them into habits. As we say here in Oklahoma, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." The pond is here. I hope you'll take a big, long guzzle. I promise you that better use of your time will mean higher revenues for you.
