Ryan Dohrn answers Maggie from Fort Worth on staying productive. He time-blocks three sales tasks daily, uses a visible 20-minute timer to stay focused, and disables email notifications to avoid constant interruptions. Poor time management once landed him in the emergency room.
Questions this video answers
Identify the three most important sales tasks and time‑block them; use a visible 20‑minute timer for focused work; and avoid instant email checking by disabling notifications and responding promptly but not immediately.
Chapters
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your global sales coach. How's your year going? How's your week going? All right, stay motivated out there. Find that passion for your sales game. Try to give you some thoughts here. We're answering our listener questions from the podcast. All right, Maggie from Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas. She asked this question. Ryan, every day I get sidetracked with things and I end the day feeling like I accomplished nothing. What are the 3 main things that you do each and every day to stay on track? So Maggie, thanks so much for sending in that listener question. Now, it wasn't— there was a time in my life when I was not a time management ninja, okay, a time management master. Now, every second of every hour, it's calculated, it's well thought out, I've got it on my calendar. So I've been there, I just am now realizing the stress that I had in my life when I wasn't a good manager of my time. So there's several things I'd like to suggest to you. The first and foremost thing is figure out the 3 most important sales tasks of your day and allocate time for those. All right, for me, 3 most important tasks: prospecting, retaining customers, following up on proposals. So I have a time block for each of those things. That time block is on my calendar. It pops up on my phone. It chimes, it rings, it buzzes, it whirls. Don't ignore the time block. That's really kind of one of the first things. The second thing that I do is I grab my phone, I go over to my timer. Okay, so let me go over there now. I go over to my timer. Where's my timer? There's my timer. And I'm gonna give myself 20 minutes to work on this proposal, and I click start. Okay, so here's the 20 minutes rolling. I take this, I'm gonna set it right over here next to my computer so I'm staring at it. Okay, I'm holding it now, but you know what I mean. Now the reason that I do that is because I want my brain to realize that I'm on the clock. People typically perform better when they realize that they're on a time clock. And so I set that here next to me. And I also, if somebody comes in to interrupt me, I'll look at them and say, listen, I only have 19 minutes and 35 seconds left to finish this proposal and then I'll get back to you. So I set those type of things in place. One of the biggest things that's probably happening is you're being distracted by your email. Now, I say this all the time at conferences when I'm coaching people. If you become a slave to your email, your day is going to— it's going to fire— going to be a firestorm all day. You're going to be a firefighter, not going to be a salesperson. So I don't answer my email instantaneously. I just don't. It doesn't buzz on my phone. It doesn't chime on my computer, not on any of the screens that I have. It doesn't buzz on my phone. Now I answer email in a timely manner, but I don't answer it in an instantaneous manner. Then the next thing and last thing I'll share with you is I prioritize my emails. So when I look at an email, I don't say to myself— don't, don't do this, Maggie— I don't say to myself, ooh, I'll answer that real quick. Well, that doesn't happen. Typically what experts tell us and what I've observed and researched, it takes you 3 to 5 minutes, okay, to reengage with something after you've been distracted. And that might be generous. Sometimes it could take 20, 30 minutes to get back to what you're doing because of a distraction. Email? is one of the greatest vampires of time that I've ever experienced, Maggie. So I would really consider not checking your email 24/7, 365. I had a guy I was working with, every time his phone buzzed, he had to look at it. Well, the reason I don't have notifications up on my phone is because I'm not man enough to resist them. I just recognize that. What I found is everybody that I coach, when I tell them to stop checking your email 24/7, 365, Stop being instantaneous. What I found is that it takes a little while to get used to. Be prompt. I mean, reply to your emails promptly. You just don't have to reply to them instantaneously. Maggie, becoming a time management ninja is, is really tough. It's a class, it's a workshop, it's an all-day effort, but just recognize you can do it. Very brief story. I ended up in the emergency room because I was a bad manager of my time. I was burning the candle at both ends. The doctor said to me, and I'll never forget it, Palm Springs, California, never forget it. She said, Ryan, if you don't control your schedule, your schedule is going to get control of you, and that means you're going to end up in heaven, and I don't want to see that. I don't want to see that for anybody either. So take it from good old Ryan Dohrn here, sales guy. Hey, get control of your schedule, time block, become a better manager of your time, and don't instantaneously respond to every single email. And Maggie, I think at the end of the day, you'll feel like you got A heck of a lot more done. All right, friends, love to motivate you, motivate your team. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. Doing a lot of virtual training, but I've had COVID. I'm ready to get back out on the road. So I think I'm safe coming to your office. So reach out to me, ryandohrn.com. And don't forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. So we're either crazy, which is possible, or we found careers that'll feed our families for a lifetime. All right, friends, God bless you. We'll see you next week.
