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Time and time again, when coaching a sales person to help them achieve
higher levels of success, these three areas come up as barriers to achieving
and selling more business. Here are some suggestions for becoming more
organized, more efficient with time, and better able to adeptly identify
what takes priority.
Organization
- There is virtually
nothing that exists on paper that can't be reproduced. If you think
you'll need it again, you'll find it. When a piece of paper crosses
your desk, give yourself a specific window of time, say thirty days,
to deal with it, then throw it away, file it or give it to someone else!
This includes all publications such as magazines, newspapers and catalogs.
- It is one thing
to be technology literate and quite another to fully utilize your contact
management system. Whether you are using ACT!, Goldmine or another software,
use it to organize your time as well as your contacts. Keeping all your
contacts in one place is great, but you need to be able to use it to
help you manage your own time in addition to just looking up phone numbers
Time Management
- There is never
enough time in a day, a week or a month! Realizing this is the first
step to becoming savvier about handling time. With technology as a tool,
it could become easy to work all the time. Don't fall into this trap!
Learning to use technology will make you more productive as you will
have your calendar and to-dos organized in one place
- Once you've prioritized
your tasks and projects in your contact manager, dedicate brief chunks
of time (15-20 minutes) for each project or task. During this time,
only respond to incoming calls that are urgent.
- Plan to do the
activities or tasks that require more energy and creativity during the
time of day and day of the week when you are most alert and energized.
- It is normal to
engage in non-planned activities such as surfing the net, answering
friend's emails, and reading the newspaper. Try keeping a time log in
15-minute increments of what you are actually spending your time doing
so that you make yourself more aware of how you spend your time. This
is always a revealing exercise that provides an eye opening reality
check!
Setting Priorities
- As a salesperson
your two primary priorities are your clients and fulfilling the requirements
of your organization (activity and revenue goals). Despite knowing this,
the ability to prioritize tasks, projects, and activities can be challenging.
One approach is to prioritize and focus only on the activities that
will improve your business the most quickly. These are things like responding
to an RFP (request for proposal) or scheduling meetings with current
and prospective clients.
- Next, take a look
at everything on your plate and use your contact manager to prioritize
according to the need to get things done today, tomorrow, sometime and
never. The things that fall into sometime or never should be forgotten
or delegated.
- Conduct this process
every other day until it becomes more natural and habitual. Your feelings
of being overwhelmed will lessen considerably. ACT! provides a handy
task organizer called SideACT! which enables you to quickly and easily
lists your tasks and then move them into ACT!. It replaces the desk-cluttering
paper note pads you use for reminders and to-do lists.
With all this great
technology out there, you may still have problems in getting more organized,
managing your time and setting priorities. Just remember that this won't
happen overnight and it takes desire and motivation to break your old
habits and develop and maintain new ones!
--------
Julie Jansen -- motivational
speaker, career coach, management consultant and author -- helps individuals
and businesses reach their fullest potential in today's rapidly changing
business world. (www.JulieJansen.net)
Copyright © 2000,
Julie Jansen, All rights reserved.
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