Emphasis on the successful management of time for sales professionals is not a new idea.
An in-depth awareness of the absolutely critical importance that it plays in ultimate career success or failure for salespeople is a new idea.
As salespeople we all want our clients, customers, or prospects to pay attention to us, to care about what we think and what we feel, to listen to what it is that we have to say and to respond to our needs and to our desires. We all want our careers to matter.
We want to have an impact on the world around us. And the more ambitious we are, the greater our desire to make our impact felt. In fact, we often determine our effectiveness as human beings by how much impact we have.
The real winners in each unique corner of the world are said to have high impact. What makes them winners is not that change has no effect on them, but that they are able to adapt to each new situation and to influence changes as these changes occur.
Somehow the winners always seem to rise above the turmoil and make things happen. They seem to get things done and are able to get others to do things effectively as well.
This effectiveness, adaptation and positive influence is high impact sales time management.
And obtaining personal goals is what this learning system is all about.
Let's define sales time management as the self-management process of achieving predetermined sales goals within a prescribed time frame.
Now, let's deal with everyone's old nemesis, achieving predetermined sales goals within a specific time frame.
Unfortunately, with no sales goals it's absolutely impossible to waste time as a sales person.
Goals are the engine of achievement for salespeople. Successful time use is measured by the achievement of these goals. Goals are the keys to effective time management, and for that matter, any other time management system that you'll ever encounter.
Goals provide parameters, very measurable and identifiable milestones against which we measure not only our sales progress, but also the time we're investing to achieve, or as the case may be, miss those goals. In fact, goals can really be called the engine of achievement, the things that really power all of our effort.
These goals could be a dollar volume of sales, an increased margin or percentage, sales increases, reduction of returns, an increased closing ratio, fewer days between sales, a greater number of referrals, more sales to existing customers, the list is virtually endless.
But the real final question to this is a simple and straightforward one, if you have no goals to strive for and to reach within a specific time frame, how would you ever know if you were misusing time?
Well the answer is obvious, you wouldn't. More importantly, you couldn't.
Every activity under your direct control should be a task, a function, or activity designed to help you do one thing and one thing only - achieve predetermined sales goals within a specific time frame. Period.
Let me ask you this, do you need a set of blinkers or blinders to keep you focused on your target, on your sales goals?
I was recently working with a client company that was just filled with high-energy, hard-working salespeople. In fact, I had never seen such a group of high achievers in one place.
Unfortunately they were running completely out of control. There was no focus; there were no goals, no delineation of target markets, no focusing of all of that energy.
The result was constant turnover, burnout and frustration.
The answer was to simply bring all of this energy under control through a carefully designed and focused set of meaningful goals.
How often do we find ourselves seeing no target, not goals? Perhaps having them but getting caught up in the day-to-day activities that don't really take us closer to any of these goals. Having them but not really being aware of their magnitude, their importance, or their value.
Many, if not most salespeople, fool themselves with a flurry of activities. This seemingly busy, but foolhardy process is commonly called the activity trap in the world of time management.
Far too many conversations among salespeople across the country center around topics such as how many sales calls can be made in a day or closing ratios and things such as pay plans. Woefully few deal with where everything starts.
The famous Hollywood Producer Samuel Goldman once said, "For as long as I can remember, whatever I was doing at the time was the most important thing in the world for me.
I have found enthusiasm for my work to be the most priceless ingredient in any recipe for successful living." Isn't that true for most people? Or at least shouldn't it be?
Human beings were made to create, to achieve, and to be going somewhere wholeheartedly.
Something in our mental and emotional makeup needs a challenge, an important mission to accomplish, and a set of tasks that gives meaning and purpose to our existence.
When we don't have it we become bored, we become blue, directionless, unfulfilled, and eventually, unsuccessful. When we feel like this long enough in sales, we also become unemployed.
By: Bill Brooks
(c)The Brooks Group 2004
www.brooksgroup.com
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