Seven practical tips for salespeople drowning in tasks. Start your day with a plan, block time for high-value activities, triage emails by revenue relevance, prioritize customer-facing work, and delegate non-core tasks to managers or teammates.
Chapters
Prioritization is key in sales, so here are seven simple tips so that you do not drown in the vast ocean of to do's. What is your first thought when you hear prioritize and sales? Is it opportunity prioritization? Optimize the resource investment around the richest and most likely sales opportunities? Or is it time management? Structuring your day around the best times for various activities like prospecting or cold calling or filing your expense report? Is it the sequence of tactics because how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Or is it the selection of metrics? Sales is a growth engine so time spent analyzing means time away from relationship building and selling. That's why you need to prioritize your metrics. Or is it customer prioritization? Do you call your prospects or do you attend the weekly sales meeting, file your forecast, attend the product development meeting or join a farewell luncheon? For me it is always about all of those topics and many more. It starts with the long list of things that need to get done, making sure that everything unnecessary stays off the list. What remains is still way more than there is time in a day. Here are seven simple tips to help you optimize your selling time and based on your specific success criteria. 1. Start your day with a plan. Have a list of your high value and time bound sales activities to focus on for the day. 2. Schedule time slots for specific activities. For example, know for your market the best time to reach decision makers and then do not waste this valuable slot on any other activity. 3. Read and answer the most important emails first rather than in order from the top down. Most important means anything tied to customers revenue. 4. Always choose to spend time with customers or prospects over any of the million other different directions you may be pulled in. 5. Ask your manager for some relief when you need it. They understand that focusing on revenue generating activities that will help you make or exceed quota is more important. Know when to say no. When you're aware of your high value and time bound activities. Only agree to others when you can complete those first delegate to your management or to other members of your team. Sometimes it takes a village to work a complex deal. All of this helps you to not drown in the ocean of to do's.
