MORE SALES, LESS TIME

 More Sales, Less Time

Surprisingly Simple Strategies for Today’s Crazy-Busy Sellers

Summary

Time is every sales­per­son’s most valu­able and most lim­ited asset. Sales­peo­ple who can’t lever­age their time wisely won’t meet their sales ob­jec­tives or earn the com­mis­sions they need. Ac­cord­ing to the busi­ness con­sul­tancy CSO In­sights, 45.4% of sales­peo­ple rou­tinely miss their quo­tas.

This isn’t due to lazi­ness or lack of ef­fort. Re­search by the Cen­ter for Cre­ative Lead­er­ship found that sales­peo­ple and other “smartphone-carrying pro­fes­sion­als” work a whop­ping 72 hours a week.

“To be suc­cess­ful in sales today, you can’t just be pro­duc­tive. You need to be smart too: a good thinker, savvy and in­sight­ful.”

The prob­lem is that every­one’s pro­duc­tiv­ity nose-dives after 55 hours. So, at least 17 of the hours the av­er­age sales­per­son works are rel­a­tively non­pro­duc­tive. When every sin­gle minute counts, this is a waste of time.

“Ex­ter­nal at­tempts to make us more pro­duc­tive – like spiffs, leader­boards, games, blitzes and bonuses – at best yield short-term spikes in per­for­mance.”

Max­i­mum pro­duc­tiv­ity is shock­ingly ephemeral. Be­hav­ioral econ­o­mist Dan Ariely claims peo­ple are op­ti­mally pro­duc­tive for only two and a half hours each day. Some­one who wakes up at 7 a.m. will achieve peak pro­duc­tiv­ity from 8 a.m. until about 10:30 a.m.

Like every­one else, sales pro­fes­sion­als need to fac­tor this and sim­i­lar research-based find­ings about pro­duc­tiv­ity into how they plan and sched­ule their work­days. In ad­di­tion to using their lim­ited time pro­duc­tively, sales­peo­ple mut be strate­gic, cre­ative and agile. They need the most up-to-date knowl­edge about their in­dus­tries. Con­stant dis­trac­tions can make it nearly im­pos­si­ble for sales­peo­ple to think and op­er­ate in­tel­li­gently and ef­fi­ciently.

“Change is a process, and there are no mir­a­cle cures; there’s only con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment.”

Ac­cord­ing to psy­chol­o­gist Bluma Zeigar­nik, dis­trac­tions and events that in­ter­rupt work cre­ate in­tense psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure – a re­lent­less in­ter­nal nag­ging that doesn’t sub­side until the per­son com­pletes his or her orig­i­nal task. Such in­ter­rup­tions un­der­mine per­sonal har­mony and men­tal ef­fi­ciency. To work smart, sales­peo­ple must avoid dis­trac­tions.

“Time spent on re­search, prep­ping and strate­giz­ing is equally as im­por­tant as the time spent on customer-facing ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Pro­duc­tive An­swers

Sales­peo­ple need to find the most pro­duc­tive in­di­vid­u­al­ized an­swers to these ques­tions:

What is the one vital task you must do today?

How can you achieve the max­i­mum pos­i­tive im­pact for each cus­tomer?

How can you get mul­ti­ple de­ci­sion mak­ers to sign off on a pur­chase?

How can you close more busi­ness?

Should you con­tinue to pur­sue a par­tic­u­lar sale or walk away from it?

“Get fussy with your time. Al­ways look for ways to op­ti­mize and sim­plify it. But be­ware of turn­ing your­self into a pro­duc­tiv­ity robot.”

“Crazy-Busy”

Un­for­tu­nately, crazy-busy is al­most every­one’s modus operandi. Sales­peo­ple and other pro­fes­sion­als work to the limit, but often they can’t keep up. To-do lists never get done; they just get longer. Ac­cept this op­pres­sive re­al­ity, and do some­thing about it.

“Work­ing and liv­ing in a dig­i­tally de­clut­tered en­vi­ron­ment is less stress­ful.”

Mar­ket­ing ex­perts, graph­ics wiz­ards and other mas­ter ma­nip­u­la­tors de­sign web­sites and apps to steal your at­ten­tion and give it to their on­line cre­ations. If you’re not care­ful, their al­lure will dis­tract you from your work. Sales­peo­ple can’t af­ford to throw away time on the In­ter­net. The av­er­age sales­per­son loses one to two hours daily to such dis­trac­tions. Pro­tect your time, and con­cen­trate your at­ten­tion on work. Break­ing the dis­trac­tion habit isn’t easy.

Start and Fin­ish Each Day Strong

Time-management and pro­duc­tiv­ity ex­pert Laura Van­derkam as­serts that most suc­cess­ful peo­ple get up early. This gives them a jump on the rest of hu­man­ity, in­clud­ing their com­peti­tors. De­velop and im­ple­ment a spe­cial “10-minute rou­tine” to start your day pro­duc­tively.

“Work­ing non­stop does not help us get our work done sooner. It slows us down. In re­al­ity, breaks are not a lux­ury; they’re a ne­ces­sity.”

As Mark Twain said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morn­ing, and noth­ing worse will hap­pen to you all day.” Work on “the right stuff, right away.” Tackle your most oner­ous jobs first. For most sales­peo­ple, that means prospect­ing.

“If you don’t take a rest, your mind starts wan­der­ing away on its own. Be­fore you know it, you’ll be on Face­book, won­der­ing how you got there.”

Com­plete each day with as much focus as you had when you began. For your end-of-day rou­tine, take a few min­utes to re­flect on your progress. Think about where your work and your life are at pre­sent. As you re­flect, con­sider what you learned dur­ing the day. This is par­tic­u­larly im­por­tant for new sales reps. Once your re­flect­ing time is over, look at your cal­en­dar to de­ter­mine what you will work on to­mor­row. Write down the three most im­por­tant ob­jec­tives you must ac­com­plish. Be­fore you go to bed, clean up your work­space to keep vi­sual clut­ter from dis­tract­ing you when you begin work the next morn­ing.

The Po­modoro Tech­nique

Many times, the ideal time-management and ef­fi­ciency tac­tics also are the least com­pli­cated and eas­i­est to im­ple­ment. The Po­modoro tech­nique, de­vel­oped by Francesco Cir­illo, is a sim­ple, po­tent ap­proach. It’s a great way to sched­ule your work and to start and stay with new pro­jects.

“Hav­ing a quit­ting time forces you to plan bet­ter. You’ll be far less tol­er­ant of any in­ter­rup­tions and dis­trac­tions, even self-generated ones.”

The Po­modoro ap­proach has six steps: 1) Choose your pro­ject or task, 2) enter it in your ac­tiv­ity log, 3) set your timer for 25 min­utes, 4) work on that pro­ject or task, 5) stop after ex­actly 25 min­utes, and 6) take a break for five min­utes.

“LinkedIn, In­sid­e­View, HubSpot Sales, Join.me, Yesware and DocuSign…can save tons of time, pro­vide you with cru­cial in­sights and in­crease your ef­fec­tive­ness.”

Do no work-related ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing your break. Re­peat this timed ro­ta­tion se­quence an­other three times. After four Po­modoro ses­sions, take a 15- to 30-minute break. Achiev­ing progress is your main goal. The beauty of this strat­egy is that you train your­self to work in your most fo­cused way in 25-minute seg­ments. The Po­modoro strat­egy works best when you keep a record of what you ac­com­plish in each 25-minute ses­sion.

The Most Pro­duc­tive Sales Teams

Com­pa­nies judge sales lead­ers by how much their teams sell. As a sales man­ager, you must make sure that your sales team max­i­mizes its re­sults. Help them by pro­tect­ing their time. Re­search by Pace Pro­duc­tiv­ity in­di­cates that most sales­peo­ple spend only 22% of their time on their most im­por­tant sales ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing “prep­ping, con­ver­sa­tions and meet­ings” with prospects. Help your sales­peo­ple deal with dis­trac­tions.

“Every link and email mes­sage re­quires us to stop, scan and eval­u­ate whether it’s wor­thy of our at­ten­tion.”

Un­for­tu­nately, you can’t push a magic but­ton to make your team mem­bers work smarter and waste less time. In­sist­ing that they “work harder on more im­por­tant things” will only make them dis­re­spect you. They prob­a­bly al­ready toil at a crazy-busy pace and can’t squeeze more hours into the day. Help your sales­peo­ple achieve more “per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity.”

“When you fig­ure out how to op­ti­mize your work and min­i­mize dis­trac­tions, you be­come sig­nif­i­cantly more pro­duc­tive, your sales skills im­prove and your knowl­edge grows.”

Share your knowl­edge with your team mem­bers. Teach them how to avoid dis­trac­tions, pre­serve their time and work more ef­fi­ciently. Ask them to use the Res­cue­Time pro­duc­tiv­ity app to de­ter­mine how they spend their time, and to lever­age new tools, tech­niques and ap­proaches to man­age their time bet­ter. In­sist that your sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives com­mit to “power hours” – one hour in the morn­ing and one in the af­ter­noon – to work ex­clu­sively on “one high-value ac­tiv­ity.”

The “Time Mas­ter Man­i­festo”

Adopt the Time Mas­ter Man­i­festo, a set of ax­ioms that add up to a “call to ac­tion” to or­ga­nize and man­age your time ef­fi­ciently. The Man­i­festo says: You are in charge of your time and your life. You need to spend time to suc­ceed, and you have that time. Pledge not to squan­der it.

“Being pro­duc­tive isn’t just about get­ting more done in less time; it’s also about get­ting the right things done and doing them bet­ter.”

Rou­tinely try new ap­proaches to work­ing smarter. Es­chew “fre­netic busy­ness” as a form of use­less crazi­ness. Fun en­er­gizes you, so in­clude en­joy­able ac­tiv­i­ties in your sched­ule. You can’t ac­com­plish your goals alone. Del­e­gate when­ever it makes sense.

Adopt a “just for today” mind-set: Telling your­self that you’re ap­ply­ing your time-management and pro­duc­tiv­ity tech­niques for today only is the eas­i­est way to in­cor­po­rate new con­trols, changes and tech­niques. One day at a time, rely on the just-for-today ap­proach. This use of smart psy­chol­ogy en­ables you to ac­com­plish much more each day.

Time Man­age­ment and Pro­duc­tiv­ity

Fol­low these tips for suc­cess­ful time-management and im­proved pro­duc­tiv­ity:

Ini­ti­ate your new time-management and pro­duc­tiv­ity pro­gram – Early suc­cess helps you stay mo­ti­vated. Spend the ma­jor­ity of your time on “customer-facing ac­tiv­i­ties.” De­vote Sun­day nights to plan­ning and sched­ul­ing crit­i­cal tasks for the com­ing week.

Pri­or­i­tize, pri­or­i­tize, pri­or­i­tize – In his best-selling book The One Thing, Gary Keller of­fers this “fo­cus­ing ques­tion”: “What’s the one thing I can do…such that…every­thing else will be eas­ier or un­nec­es­sary?”

Time blocks – Break your work­day into dis­crete time blocks, for ex­am­ple, 60- and 90-minute work seg­ments. Don’t work longer than 90 min­utes at a stretch. After each work pe­riod, take a 15-minute break. Al­ter­na­tively, use the Po­modoro ap­proach.

Be or­ga­nized – Color-code your work cal­en­dar: Green means revenue-generating ac­tiv­i­ties (calls, demos and pre­sen­ta­tions); yel­low sig­ni­fies ac­tiv­i­ties that “sup­port rev­enue gen­er­a­tion”; and red in­di­cates ad­min­is­tra­tion. This lets you tell at a glance how you plan to spend your time.

Sys­tem­atize – Focus on gen­eral sys­tems, not spe­cific ac­tiv­i­ties. Ex­am­ine your repet­i­tive tasks to see which you can sys­tem­atize. This will in­crease your sales ef­fec­tive­ness. Begin with such basic tasks as prospect­ing, pro­pos­als, pre­sen­ta­tions and re­fer­rals.

“Start small” – Suc­cess­ful change doesn’t hap­pen overnight. It’s a grad­ual, step-by-step process. Your new change pro­gram is a “col­lec­tion of habits” that you’ll de­velop over time. Begin with “one hour, one day or one ac­tiv­ity at a time and build up.”

“Be an ex­per­i­menter” – Be open and cu­ri­ous. Try a new ac­tiv­ity or ap­proach, then an­other, and then an­other. Learn as you go.

Act “as if” – Chang­ing your be­hav­ior to in­cor­po­rate new time-management tech­niques can be in­tim­i­dat­ing. Your cur­rent habits are the be­hav­iors you want to change. Rather than strug­gling to change your ex­ist­ing habits, act “as if” you al­ready pos­sess the de­sired traits and soon they’ll be­come nat­ural.

Shut off elec­tronic no­ti­fi­ca­tions and alerts – Don’t let them in­ter­rupt your work.

Use the Break­Free or Mo­ment apps – They mon­i­tor how much you use your smart­phone and your other apps.

Re­view your emails only at pre­set times – Once you make your daily sched­ule, ex­tend the times be­tween when you check your emails.

Use Unroll.me and SaneBox – These tools let you seg­re­gate es­sen­tial emails. 

“Play with change” – In­cor­po­rat­ing new habits re­quires dis­ci­pline, but it doesn’t need to be a life-and-death strug­gle. The best way to make sig­nif­i­cant changes is to have fun.

Tur­bocharge your sales – Be alert to sales ac­counts that are likely to change or up­grade their prod­uct or ser­vice needs in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture. De­velop plans for deal­ing with these ac­counts. “Set the buy­ing vi­sion” for these as­sign­ments.

Dif­fi­cult sales chal­lenges – These are “growth op­por­tu­ni­ties in dis­guise,” which makes them open to pre­vi­ously un­ex­am­ined yet in­no­v­a­tive strate­gies. 

The big­ger the bet­ter – Pur­sue larger and more lu­cra­tive clients.

Keep things sim­ple – Buy­ers hate com­plex­ity. “Sim­plify, sim­plify, sim­plify.” Make it easy for buy­ers to de­cide – and to opt for what you’re sell­ing.

The power of pos­i­tiv­ity – Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Shawn Achor be­lieves that peo­ple with pos­i­tive at­ti­tudes achieve the most sat­is­fy­ing busi­ness out­comes. He ex­plains that when you are pos­i­tive, “Your in­tel­li­gence rises, your cre­ativ­ity rises, your en­ergy lev­els rise” and “you’re 37% bet­ter at sales.”

“Take good care of your­self” – Work sen­si­ble hours. Rest and de­com­press. Eat well.

Walk for 20 to 30 min­utes – John Med­ina, au­thor of Brain Rules, ex­plains that the human brain is “built for walk­ing 12 miles a day.” Get up from your desk and move around. Enjoy short walks, es­pe­cially when­ever you hit a work snag.

Take a breath – When you want to surf web­sites on the In­ter­net or do some­thing that in­ter­feres with your focus, pause and breathe deeply for a minute or so until the urge passes.

Get plenty of sleep – Try to get eight hours of sleep a night. Set a time every evening to turn out the lights, and stick to it. For two hours be­fore bed­time, don’t use phones, com­put­ers or tablets that emit blue light.

About the Author

Jill Kon­rath is a glob­ally rec­og­nized sales strate­gist, au­thor and speaker. Her other books in­clude Selling to Big Com­pa­nies, SNAP Selling and Agile Selling.