Like many salespeople and small business owners, I find staying focused during prime selling hours to be difficult.
Interruptions, minor emergencies, emails, phone calls, and a myriad of other issues and concerns are constantly trying to draw my attention away from my primary business activity—selling.
Listen, I have only certain hours during the day that are my prime selling hours. If I lose those hours, I lose revenue; I lose precious time that no matter how hard I work, I can never regain.
Consequently, it is important I keep my focus on true sales activities between 8am and 5pm.
Nevertheless, there are things that must be done and some of those things simply won’t wait until non-selling hours.
So what did I do?
My solution has been to set aside four ½-hour times during the day when I will address non-selling issues. Twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon I set aside my selling and marketing activities in order to return calls, handle ‘emergencies,’ and the other ‘busy’ work of my business.
Of course, if a real emergency arises, it takes precedence over all else. But real emergencies are rare.
This process has allowed me to concentrate on selling and prospecting without worrying that other aspects of my business will suffer. Anything that comes up will be addressed shortly—but without interrupting my selling time.
It takes discipline to get into the habit of leaving things lie for a little while. But those things that used to find ways to cut my selling time in half—or more–are now much controllable.
Complete the Fields Below Or Sign In Using Your Facebook Account!
Your own mugshot next to your comments? Get a free Gravatar now.
You can subscribe to this post (via RSS) and be notified of new comments!
Can't find it yet? Enter your search and hit enter.
You can also check our sales tips archives
Copyright © 2007-2012 · All Rights Reserved · Reproduction without Explicit Permission is Prohibited
RSS Feed · Site Development by Small Business Toolbelt · About · Contact · Contribute · Advertise · Sitemap · Log in
Excellent point, Paul. If you are in sales, only do activities that pay you what you want to earn.
Hi Paul,
Good article. We have also found that the time it takes a Sales Professional to schedule a meeting can often take more time than having the meeting itself.
So to increase productivity, we created a service called Tungle that allows Sales People to easily schedule meetings with important clients. The clients never need to sign up to the service. Also, users can publish their availability and allow clients to schedule meetings with them. For example, my Tungle.me page is: http://tungle.me/Marc
Give it a try, many sales and BD professionals all around the world are using it.
Regards,
Marc Gingras
CEO & Founder, Tungle
Paul,
Time blocking has long been a fundamental skill taught to sales folks. I think social media, real-time, always on Web is making this harder to enforce. You have to have the personal discipline to do it and hit the sales pipeline.
Important stuff.
Michael and Bill,
Thanks for your thoughts.
Bill, social media is creating an issue for many sellers as they haven’t developed the discipline to focus on making money instead immediate gratification. Unfortunately those who can’t develop the discipline may well find themselves monitoring their favorite social media sites from home while unemployed.
Yes, blocking out time for less productive tasks is a good habit to adopt. But in the light of increasing sales productivity, let’s take a look at the greater picture.
Research shows that salespeople will never reach their performance potential without a well-defined sales-call procedure that they can follow and learn from. “Winging it” on sales calls has grim consequences – lost sales, extended sell cycles, margin erosion and no clear path to improvement. Bottom line: Your entire sales career can be mediocre if you “wing it” – even if you block out time to do less productive tasks.
Performance improves by as much as 50% when salespeople have a consistent game plan for their sales calls.
Most salespeople make the same mistakes over and over without realizing it. Without a logical sales process to follow, they can’t even identify specific problems, let alone correct them. A good sales process mirrors the pattern by which customers make buying decisions – (Salesperson, Company, Product, Price, Time to Buy.)
Another Great Sales Habit: Follow a sales process that mirrors how customers make decisions.
Hi Paul, I agree that it’s about self discipline. I tend to do my customer, industry research and what I call ‘think’ time in the evenings or in the car. The same with social and business networking sites – yes they can be a distraction but there’s nothing more important than your business network and time spent nurturing this is an investment.