Time Management Techniques for Sales Professionals
If you aren’t focused on doing the right things at the right time you lose financially. To make up for your inefficiencies you have to work yourself to death to hit your targets. But, you can avoid that with a little planning. You want the majority of your actions to be focused on those that result in a sale. You fill your sales funnel by prospecting, yet all too often you have a poor approach to prospecting. Develop a list of your most dream future customers. It’s easier to develop effective ways to approach them when you know who you’re focusing on and why.
Keep a running on-going list of all the next actions you need to take. As you look at this list decide on the actions you’ll take and when you’ll take them based on the likelihood of that action resulting in a paycheck for you. You can’t do everything and you certainly can’t do everything at once, so prioritize your top three actions each day.
With both a large list of prospects and a large list of customers, you have both vying for your attention. You need a system to stay in front of them exceeding their expectations, deepening the relationship, and motivating them to refer you. Don’t make your system complicated or it will be difficult for you to keep up with it. Have a clear objective for every contact. Lay out a plan for the entire year for how you want to connect with both your prospects and customers. Make those contacts as automatic as possible. Each contact should have an opportunity to reach out to you to speed up the buying process.
Following these time management techniques you know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. But you have to commit to taking right action to make it a reality. If you’ll just take at least three actions each day that move you closer to a closed transaction you’ll be amazed by your results. Doing this day in and day out enables you to have both time and money.
Results come from the actions you take, and you want those actions to become automatic for you. Repeating these time management skills on a daily basis will make them a habit. When you take more right actions it’s easier for you to get what you want, and getting what you want motivates you to continue to take them.
Going back to that list of all the next actions you need to take, as you look over your list you’ll realize you have things on your list that you don’t necessarily have to do. There are probably a lot of things on your list you do out of habit, or because you’re afraid to delegate them. You want to ruthlessly dump everything on your list that isn’t essential for you to do.
