10 New Time Management Techniques

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Dec 21, 2023 by Sean Luce

How much time do you actually spend in front of prospects or clients in a face-to-face posture each day? Maybe 45 minutes? Yet, most of us work at least eight or nine hours a day. Could you squeeze in one more call per day? Most would answer, yes. But how?

Salespeople are in front of unqualified prospects 60% of the time. The top sales reps in Media spend 80% of prime selling time in front of prospects and customers. Here are 10 techniques that will eliminate time wasters.

1. Prime selling time: Sixty-four percent of successful closing sales calls are made before noon. Prime selling time is usually defined as 9 a.m. to 3-4 p.m., depending on your market and average travel time between appointments. Flip-flop your call mix. Make your closing presentations in the morning and your new calls in the afternoon. This will increase your closing ratio, as prospects like to close early and fight fire later.

2. Phone qualifying: Salespeople love to set up appointments with prospects, yet often, they are not qualified. Research their Website. Determine whether they are serious about doing business before you meet with them. Surveys of major selling organizations have determined that each outside sales call costs $144.53 on average. If two of your calls are made on unqualified prospects, that's almost $300 wasted per day.

3. 15-minute blocks: Busy executives look at their time in 15-minute blocks, not by the hour. Look at your calendar. Where are the holes?

4. Drive time: If your average commute is 30 minutes per day, you are on the road 120 hours a year, not counting driving to sales calls. This is quality time you can use to prepare by listening to training podcasts. Poor routing for sales calls is also one of the biggest time-wasters.

5. Meetings: Monitor how much time you spend in front of the prospect during an actual meeting. In some cases, you schedule an hour, when you could wrap up your sales objectives in half the time.

6. Time suckers: I never had one of my co-workers buy a schedule from me. If they want to chitchat by the coffee machine, make sure they do it on their time, not yours.

7. U.S. Post Office: Learn to use the mail for prospecting. Send directed snail-mail, which states a specific reason for meeting with you, to a block of prospects. This can enhance your prospecting and keep you from wasted windshield time.

8. CMS: Contact management systems and Apps can streamline your appointments, to-do lists and scheduled meetings, eliminate paper shuffling, and help make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Outlook is a great, simple scheduling tool and for a full-fledged CMS Saleforce has a very popular system.

9. Service: Nothing beats the warmth of seeing your prospects in person. With the effective use of e-mail, you can also reduce some of the communication you used to do in the field. Use e-mail to free up more time to prospect and sell.

10. Supplies: Make sure you have with you all the necessary tools - media kits, database information, credit applications, testimonials, contracts, ect, accessible and usable on your tablet, laptop or phone..don't forget your chargers. - to conduct business, so you don't have to drive back to the office. If you make $75,000 per year, every hour is worth $38.42. If you look at one year as 244 eight-hour days, one hour a day is worth $9,375. Make every minute count.

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