In Sales Management, You Must Manage Your Time
Time is the one thing most sales managers feel they don’t have enough of. “I’m so busy I don’t have time to meet with customers.” “I can’t get out of the office to go on an appointment with my salespeople.” “I just don’t have time for my one-on-ones anymore.” Time management is critical to your sales management success.
If time management is an issue or you just want to get better at it, the first thing you need to do is to learn how to prioritize. One of the most efficient methods of prioritizing is by making sure you meet your number one objective. Meeting and exceeding your sales revenue targets.
Time is the most valuable asset you have in business. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. To be an effective sales leader, the first step is to take control of the time you have. We know you are busy. The question you have to ask yourself is busy doing what? The unexpected can suck up all your time. Customer issues, a last minute proposal, an issue with a salesperson needs to be addressed, your boss needs you for something; all of these unexpected tasks can suck up all your time. E-mail can also rob you of valuable time if you are not organized and prepared. At the end of the day, you know you were busy, but can you see what you accomplished?
Use your Calendar to manage your time
Calendars are an efficient tool that effective managers can utilize for better time management. A calendar is not just for appointments, it’s how you lay out your game plan for managing the sales activity for your business or department.
I’ve told this story on many occasions, but felt it would be apropos at this time to demonstrate the valuable use of time management. I can remember trying to setup an appointment to see a purchasing agent for one of my targeted accounts. When I got to her assistant, she told me that she only sees vendors on Thursdays. This showed me that this purchasing agent had control of her time. Thursday was set up for one purpose and everyone in the organization knew it. So how does this relate to you?
Schedule time to attend to your priorities
Sales Managers, just like the purchasing agent, efficiently and effectively managing your time is what you need to do as a sales leader. It starts by establishing your priorities. For almost all the sales managers I know, their number one priority is to meet and exceed their sales objectives. In most cases, the sales managers job is not to actually produce the sales, but to generate sales revenue through the efforts of the sales team.
Your top priorities may vary, but here are five I will use as examples that may be at the top of your list:
- Increasing lead flow
- Developing more informative and beneficial weekly sales meetings
- Scheduling weekly customer visits with your top customers
- Developing a plan and schedule for more effective one-on-ones with your sales team
- Establishing a training schedule for your sales team that involves sales techniques as well as product training
Now that you have your priorities, how can you use your calendar and time management to help you achieve your objectives.
First, open your calendar and schedule time for sales priorities. This way you never lose focus on what’s important. Start with your first priority, increasing lead flow. Schedule a time for yourself to sit down and develop a game plan for increasing lead flow.
While developing your game plan you may come up with a set of goals. For this example, we will use the goal of increasing lead flow by 25% over the next three months. This is the first step in developing a strategic plan for increasing lead flow. Next, you need to determine what you need to do reach the goal. In this case it would include the people or resources to assist in developing the plan. You need to think about which people would be the most appropriate. You may want to have a couple of your top sales people work on a plan to increase the lead flow for the sales team. For finding ways to increase lead flow from company provided leads, talk with those responsible for that function and set up a time to meet with them. Remember, that at the end of the meeting it’s important to establish the next best steps in the process. It’s also important that each person understands the deliverable you are expecting in that meeting.
Schedule reoccurring events for the year
For the one-on-one meetings with your salespeople, the starting point would be to schedule a block of time that you can use to develop a plan for how you will conduct the meetings, how they will be structured, how to introduce the meetings to the team, and when they will take place.
Next, have a meeting with the team to announce the one-on-ones and the value that should be obtained from them. Then schedule weekly meetings with each member of your sales team, on your calendar for the full year.
In the example, one of your priorities was to have more effective sales meetings. So schedule a block of time to make a quarterly plan for your sales meeting. In the planning session you should outline how your meetings will be structured.
Schedule the meeting for the quarter so that everyone is aware of what is coming. Reach out to the team to discuss the topics you would like to present and give each of them a set schedule of the dates and subject matter they will be covering. If you use this tactic of inclusion, you should also schedule time with each of them to talk about the subject matter they are going to present. This is a terrific coaching opportunity and it gives the salespeople an opportunity for development.
Your priorities can be short-term or long-term priorities. They can be scheduled out over a week, month or year, but you must schedule time for planning, meetings, and all those tasks you need to complete in order to reach the goals.
After you have scheduled time for your priorities, think about other tasks that you need to complete. When will you prepare your weekly reports, when will you prepare for your sales meetings, or when will you review and update your sales plan. Some of these will be weekly, others monthly, and some may be quarterly. The key is to establish a pattern and make the appropriate people understand how you manage your time. Will this schedule hold up 100% of the time? No, but it’s a road map to follow. Your calendar should not be completely full, life doesn’t work that way, but it should contain all of your meetings and items that support your priorities.
What about those unexpected time wasters?
Issues still come up, unexpected sales issues arise, but now you can manage your time more effectively by asking yourself, “Does reacting to this issue help me attend to my top priorities?” “Is there someone else in the organization that can handle this situation?” “Can I change my schedule to deal with this and not forget to accomplish the scheduled Task?”
The key, learn how to say NO. If someone wants a part of your valuable time and their requested time doesn’t fit your schedule, ask if another time would be better.
E-mail can be one of the biggest time consumers you have. Schedule when you do e-mails. Maybe you look at them once, twice, or three times a day. Don’t become such a slave to email that you can’t leave your desk in fear of missing something. Another way to deal with e-mail interruptions, is to have your e-mail go to your smart phone so you aren’t stuck at the desk.
Useful calendar tools
There are a lot of tools available to help you use your calendar more effectively. A lot of businesses use Microsoft Outlook to manage their calendar and e-mail. Today, technology allows you to keep your calendar and e-mail with you. Smart phones like the iPhone or Android sync with your desktop so you no longer have to sit at your desk to see what’s on your schedule or to set a new appointment.
Google documents have a very good calendar program that is free
This program allows you to manage your calendar on line and you can sync your calendar with Microsoft Outlook, phones using Android, BlackBerry and of course IPhone. This is a link to Google Sync.
I like the Apple iPhone. It has been my primary phone since it debut. There is a good post at Business Insider “7 Apps That will Replace Your iPhones Calendar” you may want to check out.
An Excellent Book on Time Management
I came across an excellent book on time management by Karen Leland and Keith Bailey. Here is my affiliate link to the book on amazon. Time Management In an Instant: 60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day (In an Instant (Career Press))
The key for an effective sales leader is to have some sort of time management system in place. You will be amazed at how much more efficient and effective you will become. Proper use of your calendar will not answer all the questions on how to gain control of your time, but it’s a start to helping you become a more effective leader.
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