SMW 009 How Sales Managers Can Use Time Management to Reach Their Goals5 min read

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Time Management Is The Key

Time management is critical to your sales management success.  With all the demands a sales manager has tugging at them each day, how you manage the time you have is extremely important.  For the sales manager to be effective, you have to keep your goals front and center so they don’t get lost in the shuffle.  Prioritize.

Of all your assets, time is the most valuable.  Once it’s gone, it is lost forever.  To be effective, the first step is to take control of the time you have.

Time Management is Key – Sales Management Workshop

Establish a list of priorities.  Each of us needs to determine what are the critical things we must do to make sure that we accomplish our sales objectives.  Once we have done that, we are in a position to not only manage our time more effectively, but to use time management to insure we reach our objectives.

Your First Priority, In Time Management, Is To Achieve Your Sales Objectives

Above all else, your number one priority is to achieve or exceed your sales objectives.  All of your other objectives must support the achievement of that goal.

Start by developing a list of priorities and assign the  time you will devote to each of them.  Don’t go off kilter when they don’t fit nicely into a 40 hour week. You aren’t doing anything wrong, that’s the price of admission to success and meeting your objectives.

Keep in mind that your top priority is to meet your sales objectives.  Anything that takes you away from that should be put into a pile labeled, after I have achieved my goals.

To support your top priority and goal of meeting and exceeding your revenue targets you should list out those things that support that goal. In most cases, the sales managers job is not to actually produce the sales themselves, but to generate sales revenue through the efforts of others.  They generate revenue through the efforts of the sales team.

That being said your top priorities should be the development of your sales teams productivity, and your marketplace. Your priorities, goals and objectives may vary, but here is a list of five that could be yours:

• Increasing lead flow – This is something you never have enough of, so how can you make it better?  Schedule time to develop your lead program.
• Developing more informative and beneficial weekly sales meetings – we talked about this in the last podcast,  Team Coaching – The Sales Meeting.
• Schedule weekly customer visits with your top customers – Customers are king, and you are the king maker. Good time management practices will give you time to visit your most important assets.
• Developing a plan and schedule for more effective one-on-ones with your sales team.  One-on-one meetings with your sales people represent the best methods for improving performance you have and should be on your calendar.  This should be a top priority.
• Establishing a training schedule for your sales team that involves sales techniques as well as product training – If you aren’t using time management to establish a training schedule, you are missing the boat.