Why Do You Never Seem to Have Enough Time?
by Kelly Riggs
Salespeople never seem to have enough time.
Which is interesting, because time is arguably the most important asset that any salesperson has. In fact, the real currency that salespeople trade in is not products and services, it’s time and ideas. The less time a salesperson spends in front of potential customers, the more challenging it is to develop new business and grow revenue; and the fewer productive ideas a salesperson has to offer customers, the more difficult it is to win acquire new customers. While there are ways business owners and salespeople can free up more time, perhaps by outsourcing their tax returns to one of the best Tax Accountants Adelaide has to offer, for example, finding time to spend with customers is always difficult.
Customers buy ideas. And it takes time to present those ideas.
It’s pretty simple stuff.
So, you would think that salespeople would guard their time like Fort Knox. Except most don’t.
Once they’ve been in the field for a while, the “urgent” begin to take control. And the most urgent item, among many, is the customer who needs something done immediately. For many reasons I won’t discuss in this post, salespeople become tethered to low-value, constant-attention customers, and they just can’t seem to break the cycle of dependency.
And that’s just one example of wasted time. What impact does it have on performance? Average salespeople get wrapped up in a vicious cycle where they never (or rarely) hit their numbers, and they find it impossible to consistently prospect for new opportunities – even as they seem to work more and more hours every week.
Sound familiar?
You start off the week with the best of intentions. You even block time during the week to make those critical new prospect calls. But, the boss wants more paperwork, customer issues seem to come out of the woodwork, and every day you’re spending more time with a fire extinguisher than anything else.
Suddenly, the week is over, and you’re no closer to any new business that you were last week. Worse, you’re probably going to miss your number again this quarter if you can’t find some FREAKING time to prospect!
So, how are you supposed to solve this problem?
There are several things that probably need to change, but one of the most fundamental issues is how little value we tend to place on our time. Although we say we don’t have enough, we certainly don’t protect our time like the golden asset that it is.
Consider that the average salesperson gives away — yes, GIVES AWAY — six to eight hours every single week. If you think that sounds ridiculous, have someone shadow you for a whole and record how your time is used. In many, many cases, you will be embarrassed at how cavalierly you toss chunks of time overboard.
Here are a few areas where time is routinely wasted:
- Too much windshield time – excess travel time that could easily be avoided
- Long lunches or frequent breaks
- Time wasted on the computer in a dozen different ways
- Using prime selling time for routine paperwork or reports
- Using prime selling time to prepare when you could’ve prepared the night before
- Responding to a customer demand that could easily be scheduled for a later time
Many times, average salespeople will argue for days about these items, insisting that one or more of them are necessary or unavoidable. But, to put it quite bluntly, it’s just complete nonsense.
Take this to the bank: GREAT salespeople don’t make excuses when it comes to their time. It is THE most valuable asset they have, and they work diligently to maximize how it is used.
Because every hour wasted is an hour you can never recover. It’s another hour you can’t use to develop new business – or anything else important. It’s like chips in a poker tournament – even by understanding how poker games work, if you give them away early with stupid decisions early in the tournament, they can’t be used to apply pressure later. If you haven’t taken the time to check out sites like Card Player Lifestyle to learn how to become a better poker player, you won’t know that keeping those chips, and adding more to the stack, is critical to winning a poker tournament.
To be honest, if you are to read over something like this article here http://www.pokertube.com/article/online-gambling-in-new-zealand-is-on-the-rise or the likes and see that online poker is on the rise in a lot of different countries, then a lot of people would do well to remember to keep their chips and gamble a little smarter.
The same is true with your time. If you don’t spend time in critical revenue-building activities, you will never reach the upper echelon of income-producers.
Do you value your time the way you should?
Probably not. It’s just human nature.
But the good news is that you can solve this problem. The key is to become far more intentional about your work each week. Don’t just set priorities; create the sequence of steps to execute those priorities. The best of intentions are often sacrificed at the altar of excuses only because it was never really a PRIORITY. It was just an item on a task list.
A real priority MUST be accomplished. It must be accomplished in a specific time frame – otherwise it wouldn’t be a PRIORITY, would it?
Before you hit the door each day, you should know what you’re doing that day. You cannot wait until the day starts to make those decisions. And if you haven’t created a plan to accomplish the most important things, you never will. And this includes every aspect of a business; whether you need to hire in accounting firms in jacksonville fl or wherever you are located to help take your focus of finances and onto other areas of your business, such as increasing revenue.
Plan your work. Work your plan.
That is the very first advice I was given when I started in sales 35 years ago.
And it still applies today.
No matter how much technology you add in.