Time Management Checklist

Time is money – money for you, revenue for your company.

And we all have the same amount of it. Same days in a month, hours in a day, and minutes in an hour for everyone. It just seems to work better for some than others.

Below is your time management checklist for sales leaders. It’ll help you identify the important elements to consider when developing your personal time management system. Some aspects may apply to your sales environment, some may not – use what works for you and skip the rest.

Moving forward, be sure to evaluate your time management practices periodically and use this checklist as your guide.

It’s your sales time. Are you rich enough not to waste it?*

Be SalesTough.

____________________

Organize your time

The money hours

• Organize your day around the money hours – the hours when you can and should be talking with prospects and customers
• Handle non-revenue generating activities before or after the money hours

Prospecting hours

• Dedicate a certain percentage of money hours to prospecting-only time
• To increase the probability of reaching prospects, vary the time of day you prospect
• Schedule it, do it, love it

Follow-up

• Queue up and standardize your frequently used follow-up emails and communications for easy production and distribution
• Document follow-up activity immediately – don’t set it aside

Professional development

• Schedule non-money hours for sales skill development or improving industry and/ or product knowledge

Understand the value of your time

Sales days

• Be aware of the sales days for each month and quarter
• Know where you are in the sales time line and plan accordingly
• Download and post a sales days calendar

Sales stats

• Understand and track your sales stats so you can plan effectively
  • dials to contacts
  • contacts to qualified leads
  • qualified leads to proposals
  • proposals to contracts
  • contracts to customers
  • dials per hour
  • follow-up calls per hour
  • follow-up attempts before disqualifying
  • determine the value of each sales hour given your earnings level/ target

Extra time

• Choose a reasonable amount of extra time to dedicate to each sales day (10 extra minutes each sales day adds one extra sales week to your year and potentially one extra week of income… if not more)

Productive down time

• Always have something to read always – always – for flight delays, waiting rooms, and lines
• Use drive time for sales development, practice (e.g., confident closing statements, objection handling, asking open-ended questions, etc.), and phone calls (get a headset if you can – no texting)

The extra call

• One extra call a day is more than 250 extra contacts in a year

Remember time management basics

Start early

• Not only for the day, but also for the week, month, and quarter
• Start early on projects and sales appointments

Plan ahead

• Look ahead to sales days around holidays, end-of-the-month and end-of-the-quarter and plan accordingly
• Be aware of the sales timeline (cycle) for your product, where you are in the month, and where you are with the prospect

Respect time

• Your time, your prospect’s time, your customer’s time
• Professionals don’t waste time and prospects and customers respect those who understand this – be punctual and be succinct

TIC TOC

“Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them.”

Bud Fox
Stock Broker
from the film, Wall Street (1987)

Now go sell something.~>

(The “Are you rich enough not to waste time?” question above was inspired by the film Wall Street – 1987. The antagonist, Gordon Gekko, while not a great role model, gave us some great lines. This one implies that wealthy people understand that time is very valuable. Full clip here (21 seconds).)