In the field of sales, there is not enough time in the day to complete all of the work that needs to be done and as a result, sales time management can be one of the keys to producing consistent results.  There are a few very clear and practical tactics that we can employ to not only improve productivity, but to also help to decrease stress at the same time.

1.  Compartmentalize the Calendar

When working as sales person, there are many different responsibilities and types of tasks that need to be completed in order to be successful.  We must take care of our existing clients, we always need to find new business, we need to continue to learn and improve our skills and knowledge, and on top of all that we will usually have a number of administrative tasks that we need to take care of.

One tactic to help with this chaos is to compartmentalize the week to break it up into segments and then align the individual segments with different types of tasks that need to be completed. 

For example, you may have a lot of tasks to do in both areas of finding new clients and completing administrative work.  Not only does it take 100% of your attention to be successful while working in each of these individual areas, but they also require you to be in a very different gear in terms of skills and mindset and it might not be productive to try to perform these different tasks at the same time.  As a result, if we block out Monday morning each week to focus solely on administrative work and block out Tuesday morning to focus cold calling for new business, we can improve our sales time management.

2.  Automate Processes

It is amazing how much we can improve sales time management by using different forms of technology to automate and streamline our sales steps and tasks.  Whether it has to do with our communications with customers, our communications with our prospects, or the way we process transactions and fill orders, we can benefit tremendously from a time perspective by always improving our ability to automate.

For example, if we send greeting cards to thank our prospects and clients for their time and business, this could be a time consuming activity in terms of writing and mailing the cards.  But if an online system can be used to streamline this step, that can free up time to by used on other tasks.

3.  Delegate Activities

As a sales person, the business that we build can sometimes become our baby.  And while we know our baby better than anybody else, in order to be successful and for effective sales time management, we must learn how to delegate responsibilities to other team members.  If we don’t delegate enough, too much of our valuable time will be spent on tactical activities and this can have a negative impact on the growth of our business.

4.  Track Items

A day in the life as a sales person can be very fast and chaotic.  With that being the case,  it is critical to have some sort of system to track the open items and "to do's".  Not only will this help to ensure that we take care of everything that needs to be taken care of, but it can also help to decrease our stress level.

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Launch Pad Solutions provides sales coaching helpng sales pros to improve sales time management.