More than any other form of stress, time management causes angst in people. In sales, that means that the fear of loss of time is dominant and powerful in both your world and the world of your prospects.
Today, I want to discuss our time as salespeople. When we got into an organization, we rarely see people standing around and doing nothing. Even if the activity levels are low, people seem busy. What that tells us is that many people do many things, but not necessarily the right things, in the right sequence, and in the right timing. Countless times, I’ve coached a sales person or a sales leader who is working long hours, but not being effective. Time management is actually a misnomer. Time is absolute, and we can’t manage it, much less control it. What we are really talking about is managing ourselves, specifically how we use time.
So here is my cheat sheet on getting the most bang out of your time:
1 – 80/20 rule. Yup, the Paretto principle applies to our calendars as well. 80% of your results will come from 20% of your tasks. So job 1 is identifying which of our tasks fall into that 20%. Hint, if you are a salesperson, PROSPECTING is in the 20%!!!! Prospecting, defined as the pursuit of appointments where you can have a fit/no fit conversation with a prospect, regardless of if you do it with email, phone, texts, drop ins, carrier pigeons or smoke signals. Stephen Covey refers to this as the “big rocks first” principle. Google that if you’ve never heard of it. The 20% of high impact tasks go into your calendar first. Everything else fits around those.
2 – “DD” List. Don’t Do these things yourself. You picked out the 20% of high impact tasks in step 1, now identify the things in the other 80% that you can delegate or hire out. For example, I could work on my website. I might even like doing that, but someone with better skills can do it so cheap now that this item goes on my DD list. I DON”T DO these things. I farm them out or delegate them.
3 – Nuke the multitasking. Multitasking is a myth, and you end up spending more time doing 3 things than if you had done them one by one. Prioritize, focus. Eliminate the constant “pings” coming into your world. Phone calls can be returned, so can emails. Slack, G-chat, and similar tools are time killers. Schedule a few times a day to check those.
4 – Ditch the to-do list. To-do lists are wish lists, not based in real thinking. “This is all the crap I wish I could get done, in no particular order, and NOT connected to the time factor.” When someone comes to you with a task, calculate the time necessary to complete it, find that time block in your calendar, and schedule it. That will prevent you from overcommitting to things that you do not have the time to do. You can always move them around if things come up, but make TIME a part of the decision when accepting commitments.
5 – Embrace your Dr. NO. No was the first word most of us spoke. Using step 4 above, you will have a sense of what your time availability is, and based on that, it’s time to be honest with people and start saying no more often. “I would love to help organize the annual Kiwanis bbq, but I don’t have the time. I wouldn’t be able to commit the time necessary, so I am going to say no”. It’s not nice to lie to people. Be honest. The truth is we agree to a lot of things that are going to take time away from things that are MORE important. Don’t do that. Delegate, hire out, say no.
6 – Vidyard/Loom. I picked this up a while back from a guest on the Tim Ferris podcast. BEST time management hack I’ve ever discovered. Especially for me, since I train a lot of people. When you are doing one of those tasks that you want others to pick up (eg, training a new team member on Hubspot). record a loom/vidyard. Send it to them. Store it and keep it for other times you will need it. Yes, sometimes they need updating, but I have saved EONS of duplicate work time doing this since I picked up this hack. I record 2-3 of these a day now. I’ve got over 300 of them archived by subject. That service is worth every penny if you use it well.
You don’t manage time. You manage your use of time.