If you’re a successful salesperson, you already know the key skills needed to develop and maintain your business. Essentially they boil down to 1) finding qualified prospects, 2) determining potential needs, 3) closing sales and 4) taking responsibility for customer service.
This means you need to find, cultivate and maintain relationships with new prospects and existing clients. By keeping the funnel full of prospects, you'll ensure you have a steady stream of business. But transcending proficiency in these areas is the issue of time. What key priorities should you be focusing on? How do you spend your time compared to others? Are you maximizing your productive time and minimizing time wasters?
Many people think that they are good time managers because they can do several things at once. They wrongly believe that by multi-tasking, they can get more things done than other people and are, therefore, more effective. What really matters is having the ability to focus on matters in a timely manner. People looking to buy from you want someone who can provide them with outstanding service and accurate answers to their questions. Good time management skills are necessary for both.
If you need some help in this area, try implementing these steps, so that you can better manage time and get more things done the right way, every time:
1) Plan ahead
Try to do your planning at the same time every day. For example, you plan Tuesday’s activities on Monday afternoon. Use the time to review past accomplishments, as well as future things to do. If you have appointments set for the next day, pull the catalogs you’ll need to show in advance instead of waiting to look for them on the day of your appointment. And use only one planner to keep track of all of your appointments. Keeping a separate business and personal planner creates confusion and wastes time.
2) Stop procrastinating
3) Capitalize on your strengths
Everyone excels at something. Determine what are your strengths and then use them to your best advantage. If you’re a morning person, then return calls at that time. If you work more effectively after lunch, tackle your hardest problems then. Tailor your strengths to best serve your needs.
4) Acknowledge your weaknesses
During the process of determining what you do best, you are likely to come face-to-face with your weaknesses. When you do, you can either ignore them or take whatever steps necessary to correct the deficiencies. The successful salesperson corrects them as quickly as possible, so that their weaknesses no longer hinder their efforts to get things done.
5) Take time for you
With the bombardment of increasing technology, it’s becoming harder to think quietly. If you don’t provide yourself with enough time to really concentrate, it will be impossible to do things right. It’s more important than ever to actually schedule a little time for yourself each day as if it were an actual appointment and stick to it. Go to a quiet place where you can use the time to think and figure things out.
6) File it or throw it.
Don’t waste time fretting over what needs to be kept and what needs to be discarded. When something comes in, either find a proper place for it or get rid of it completely. Never handle a piece of paper more than once. That way you’ll avoid the "I'll just put this here for now" habit.
7) Take accurate notes
Always write down important information, regardless of how well you trust your memory. By taking accurate notes, you’ll make sure that you have time-saving information that will enable you to get things done right on the first go-round.
8) Manage e-mail daily
You probably receive more e-mail messages than you ever thought possible—many of which are unwanted. After deleting the ones you don’t want, it’s a good idea to place items you wish to keep in separate e-mail folders as you would with paper items. Storing them in your In box or Sent Mail creates additional clutter, similar to that which you constantly face with paper.
9) Arrive 10 minutes early for appointments
Getting places early is a real time saver. Doing so opens up a whole new world of possibilities for you because several things can happen. You may have the chance to visit with clients a little earlier than planned, which gives you the chance to finish your meeting sooner. Even if you can’t see clients before the set times, you can use the time spent waiting to catch up on other things.
10) Write up orders every day
There are several reasons why you should write up orders in a timely manner. The most obvious being that the faster customers receive their completed orders, the sooner they’ll need to re-order items. Also, it’s easier to correctly write up orders when the information is fresh in your mind. You run the risk of being unable to recall what a customer really wanted if you wait several days to write up the order.
11) Determine what’s really important
The best way to utilize time is to determine what matters to you. Set goals and work toward meeting them, rather than just going through the motions of work. When you really know what you want from your efforts, you will be able to focus on the tasks at hand more effectively.
Thirty years ago people thought that if they worked forty hours per week, they had done their job. Since most salespeople today put in many more hours than that, it’s important to make every minute count. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.” By keeping your efforts on track, you’ll be successful at doing things right the first time. Both you and your customer will benefit!