Ryan Dohrn breaks down his CRM list system: three lists per product (prospecting, in-progress, active), each capped at 20-30 items. He time-blocks his day to work each list at specific times, starting with prospecting in the morning, which he says drives higher sales performance.
Questions this video answers
I tag or categorize accounts to build three core lists per product—prospecting, in‑progress, and active—keeping each list to about 20‑30 items. I then time‑block my day: prospecting in the morning, in‑progress around 2:30 pm, and active/retention work less frequently, often on Fridays.
Chapters
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your Global Sales Coach. How you doing? Having a good week out there in sales land? We're answering your listener questions, your questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. D-O-H-R-N. ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, this question comes from Robin in Tulsa. Hey Tulsa friends! Robin in Tulsa. Hey Ryan, I'm working lists, or trying to, in my CRM Could you help me better understand how you work lists in your CRM? Robin, great question. So those of you that know me well know that a lot of times I'm pretty easily distracted. And so people, somebody will come to the door, a phone call, a text, an email. And so to stop being distracted, to create better focus within my CRM, I either tag accounts to create a list, or depending upon your CRM, I'll put people in a category so I can sort by that, or what I'll do is I'll build lists within my CRM. Most have like a list building feature. Now the reason I do that is because, for example, at 11:30 I'm gonna work my prospect list. Now I try to keep my list to say 20 or 30 so they're somewhat manageable, so you might wanna think about that. But then I also have another list called in progress, so I've got 3 main lists for each product that I sell. I've got a prospecting list Which is people I'm trying to get a meeting with. I've got an in-progress list with people that I've met with that I'm following up with. And then I've got an active list for those customers that I'm trying to retain for a lifetime. So I think what you want to do, and if your CRM does not do lists, get another CRM. Any CRM worth its salt is going to be able to create lists or do tagging type of features, you know, for you. So I'm— what I'm doing is I'm building the list in the CRM, Robin, but then what I'm also doing is working that list at a specified time each day. So I'm time blocking my day to work those lists. Now, prospecting is the hardest for me, so what I do is I schedule that in the morning so I can really be fresh. Then if I'm gonna be doing my in progress, that's usually 2:30 or so. And then if I'm doing my actives, that's not every day, so that might be, say, once a week or something like that. I do a lot of retention on Fridays because I find that a lot of people are pretty chatty on Fridays. So Robin, I hope that helps you because I believe that lists create focus and focused salespeople Almost always make more money. But Robin and everybody, don't forget. I mean, if this job was easy, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. Okay? And they're not. We're not crazy. We're the chosen few here. We found careers that'll feed our families for a lifetime. Hey, for more about what I can do, to find out more information about my— got my new book out that's called Selling Forward: Pandemic-Tested Strategies for Success. You can find that on Amazon or Barnes& Noble or whatever. Love to come to your sales meetings and talk about the book and things like that. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. All right. Thanks, friends. We'll see you next week. Bye.
