Unlocking Your Sales Productivity: Top 3 Time Management Tips | Sales Training Tips & Sales Advice

What's going on, friends and fans? Glad to have you back again. Ryan Dorn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. And hey, thanks so much for watching the videos, listening to the podcast. Don't forget to subscribe down below, however it is that you listen to the podcast or watch the videos on YouTube, so you never miss an update. All right, this month we're focusing in on time management. Now, I speak about time management all the time. It's actually one of my favorite topics to speak on because There's several things I've done really well in my life. One of them has become a really ridiculous ninja of time. Haha. A ninja, if you will, of time. And that is because I recognize— and I'd love for you to consider this— just recognize there's no way for you to get 25 hours in a day or 26 hours in a day. So what we've got to do is figure out ways that we can manipulate the time that we're given each day to not only have a great marriage or a great family life or a great work life, but kind of figure out how do we just do more with less time and what do we do to be a lot more efficient. So there's 3 main things, and I teach a class on the 10 things you should do. There's 3 main things that I do. Now this first one is a little bit different than most people either hear me talk about or you'll hear or see in a book or something like that. Most people would tell you do the hardest things Well, I'm not saying that's bad advice, but it doesn't work for me because I'm really not a morning person. Like, it's not that I can't get up early. It's not that I don't speak at 8 o'clock in the morning. It's not like I don't have client calls at 8 in the morning. But when I'm getting out of bed at 6 or whatever the time is, I'm not necessarily like, yeah, let's go. It's just not— it's just not me. Now, you might find that hard to believe because of the enthusiasm that I bring to speaking and doing this kind of stuff. So first thing in the morning, I'm kind of like, whoo, I need some coffee. I'm a breakfast guy. I need some breakfast. I need some coffee, maybe a couple cups of coffee. I need to watch a little bit of the news or whatever the circumstance is. So if you told me first thing in the morning, man, you need to do the hardest things, quite honestly, you're not going to get the best performance out of Uncle Ryan here. Good old Ryan. You're not going to get the best performance. So what I like to advise people to consider, as long as it fits with your work and with your supervisor's schedule and their expectations. I actually like to coach people, coach people that I actually do the hardest things of my day at the time of day that I'm at my best. So typically, in all sincerity, I'm at my best after lunch. I mean, I got the morning to kind of get things going. I do a tremendous amount of work and prospecting and, and things like that. But if I've got to really do hard things, it usually is going to be in the afternoons. My brain's ready. I've had plenty of time to have coffee and food and kind of get my day going, and my body's jiving. And I really feel like if you're gonna get the best out of me, you're gonna be needing to ask for an afternoon performance. So when you think about the hard things, what's hard for you? Like if making calls in the morning is hard for you. See, for me, making calls in the morning, my brain's just not firing right. I have to wait till the afternoon when I have my brain— give my brain a chance to warm up and do some mental gymnastics and work with a few people and things like that. So for me, I'm not that I'm never going to prospect in the morning, but if I've got some hard prospecting or hard tasks, I'm going to figure out, hey, when am I at my best? And then I time block my day around my schedule of when I'm at my best. Now keep in mind those little caveat, a little wrinkle there. Most of the time though, I would coach you and advise you that you should build your schedule schedule around your buyers. So you want to train yourself and build your life, your sales life, around your buyer's schedule. Well, I think this still works because if I've got my buyer's schedule in mind, a lot of times afternoon answering of emails, afternoon prospecting, afternoon type of things— there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Now let me be clear so I don't get about a hateful— a bunch of hateful comments down below. I'm not suggesting you don't work in the morning. I'm just suggesting that you do the hard things at the time of days when really the time of day when you're really at your best. And that's what I like to do. All right. So the second thing that I like to do is I understand and I honor the 20/60/20 rule of time management. Now, this doesn't have to do with a time of day per se, as it is your allocation of time to tasks that are really important. So the 20/60/20 rule works like this. You should typically spend about 20% of your day in new business development mode. You would spend about 60% of your day in hosting of meetings, managing customers, doing customer service work, that kind of thing. And then what a lot of people forget is that last 20%. That last 20% should really be on retention. Keeping customers for a lifetime. Now, I've spoken about it a lot. Don't forget, you don't want to confuse retention with customer service, right? Customer service is expected. Retention are the things you do above and beyond customer service to keep people coming back for a lifetime. So that might be your handwritten thank you notes, it might be non-sales phone outreaches, it might be sending somebody a gift from sugarwish.com or or thankful.com or something along those lines. So keep in mind 20-60-20. 20% of your day, so about an hour and a half or so, should be spent on building that pipeline, prospecting, and setting meetings. About 60%, and not a whole lot more than that now, should be spent on hosting meetings, customer service, and that kind of thing. And then that last 20%, about an hour or so, should really be spent on retaining customers, renewing them, keeping them active. Staying in front of them. Don't forget, you are 60 to 70% more likely to retain a customer than you are to get a brand new customer. And adding to that, most current customers are in excess of 50% more likely to try your new products and services. That's why that retention piece is so important. All right, so the first thing was You need to try to do the hard things at the time of day that really works for you. Don't ignore your buyers or their schedule. The second thing is breaking down your day into that 20/60/20 rule. And then the third thing that I like to do is I really want to focus in on not being random. So a lot of times you're going through your day and things happen randomly, and because they happen randomly, you see them as a good thing. And randomness is not going to help you in life. Don't confuse randomness with spontaneity. Of course, you should be spontaneous with your spouse or partner or kids or whatever. Randomness is, I'm kind of going through my day and I'm like, you know what, I should prospect a little bit. Yeah, uh, you know, I should probably retain clients a little bit. Yeah, well, those emails came in, I guess I'll answer them now. That means you don't really have a plan. And without a plan— or was it like Zig Ziglar or somebody said failure to plan is planning to fail? Somebody More famous than me, said that. When you think about it, friends, you've got to have some type of plan. Like when your alarm goes off in the morning, does your brain automatically register that your day kind of has some semblance of order or some type of schedule? Or maybe you're one of those people that's like, Ryan, I'm living every day like it's my last day. It's like, well, if I'm living every day like it's my last day, I'm definitely not doing videos. I'm not training people. I'm not selling anything, I'm doing something else like vacationing somewhere or spending time with my wife or something like that. So when you think about it, one of the things I do to focus in on not being random is to really use the Pomodoro technique to my advantage. So Pomodoro being the Italian word— Italian word for tomato was actually tomato— tomato was developed by an MIT student That actually was having trouble focusing. And so what they learned is that their brain could really stay focused for about 25 minutes, and then they needed a break. So this MIT student, they actually had a tomato-shaped timer, and that's where the Pomodoro Technique was actually born. This is how it works. It's very simple. I do it all the time. I'd love for you to consider it. You start a task for 25 minutes. So let's say you need to write a proposal. or create something for a client. Set a timer for 25 minutes, 25 minutes, and then you work on that task for 25 minutes. Even better than that, set that timer nearby, use your phone and set it next to your computer. Let that countdown clock click in front of you because your brain then goes into bomb mode, which means, oh no, I only have 25 minutes left and then the bomb's going to go off or whatever your brain thinks. Okay. So when you think about that, you see the countdown clock happening. Your brain will hyperfocus and you tend to be a lot more efficient. After that 25 minutes, ding, then you take a 5-minute break and then you do it again. Either you move to a new task or you keep going on that task for 25 minutes and you take a 5-minute break and you're gonna cycle through that 4 times and then you should take a longer break, like go out and walk the dog or go outside, get a cup of coffee or go for a run or, you know, whatever your circumstance is. When you think about becoming a master of something, you think about mastering this type of time management world. You've heard lots of different authors like Gladwell talk about— Malcolm Gladwell talk about 10,000 hours to become a master. Well, that's why I try to focus on this every single day. I want to work towards that 10,000 hours of being a time management master. And I should probably look and see how much focus I've put on in the last 6 or 7 years. Maybe I would qualify for that 10,000 hours. But because that's sort of a really big goal, 10,000 hours before you'll become a master of it, this is what I would love for you to consider. Just work on it for, say, 25 minutes a day. Set aside your first 25 minutes for a task. Time block it. Put it on your calendar. Repeat it. Follow that 20/60/20 rule. Recognize, friends, that your brain is sort of— I mean, this is not science or anything— your brain is kind of like a battery. And the only time you get to recharge that battery is when you come off task and take a little break. See, a lot of you, you don't come off task. What you do is you just change tasks, so your brain never has a chance to recharge. And you maybe only slept 4 hours last night. Maybe you're out with your buddies having some cocktails or whatever, didn't get enough sleep, didn't take your vitamins in the morning, didn't start your day with a breakfast, whatever. So you just got to recognize, friends, that our brains really need our help. If we take care of ourselves, we take care of our brains, we get plenty of sleep, and we have a plan for time management, that, my friends, is when you will almost always be more successful. So could I make a suggestion to you? Could I give you a challenge? Why don't you focus in on those 3 time management techniques for the next 30 days? Then I'd love for you to go in the comments down below and tell us how you did, because I believe that it's inside of all of us to better manage our time, and we better manage our time, guess what? The dollars will typically follow. Your stress will go down and your bank account will go up. Who doesn't like that combination? Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. If marketing was easy, everybody'd be doing it. If being a leader was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. These are great careers that we've chosen for a reason. Friends, they will feed your family for a lifetime. I absolutely promise. Love to come to your office. Love to train your team. Love to speak at your national sales conference. I speak 40 to 60 times a year on time management and so many other topics. Reach out to me. Love to help. You can find out more over at ryandohrn.com. D-O-H-R-N. All right, friends, we'll see you next month.