50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #1 – Time for Tasks

July 16, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #1 – Time for Tasks

By Bill Phillips, Strategen, Inc.

Starting with the twelve Organizational Skills, let’s look at Habit 1 – Time for Tasks:

Top Performers plan time each day to do specific tasks.  The day is divided into segments dedicated to tasks such as follows: follow-up calls, quoting, trip planning, calendar development, account plan development and other daily tasks.

Time management is at the core of performance for Top Performers.  They understand how valuable their time is to themselves, their company and their customers.  As defined in our book, a salesperson selling $3 million a year working ten hour days has revenues of $1200 per hour and a salesperson selling $6 million a year has revenues of $2,400 per hour.

How do these salespeople manage their time?  What do they do with every hour of every day to make sure they sell $1,200 to $2,400 per hour?  Top Performers know how to manage their time and that involves having a daily, weekly and monthly plan that focuses their effort where it needs to be when it needs to be there.

Top Performers start with a personal business plan that includes goals and objectives to guide the efforts to reach the $1,200 to $2,400 per hour target.  This plan includes assigning time each day, each week and each month to achieve these goals.

• Develop a monthly plan that breaks the month into weeks to set priorities that guide the overall schedule.
• Develop a weekly plan that breaks the week into days and assigns time each day to specific tasks.
• Develop a daily plan that breaks your day into segments and make sure to do the most important things each day.

Top Performers think like this and they put their thoughts into actions.

• They have a 90 day calendar that places them in front of their key accounts and targeted customers when needed and provides the road map to planning their time.
• They plan their sales efforts to meet their sales quota.
• They plan their sales visits and time for quoting and follow-up.
• They plan for New Business and they get it.  

TIME MANAGEMENT 

For Top Performers every month, every week, every day and at times every hour is planned and focused on the goals that earn the results. Top performers plan time for account maintenance to support and grow existing customers. Top Performers plan time to call on key accounts and targeted customers to gain new business. Top Performers plan time for follow-up with the ability to be in front of the customer at the right time throughout the sales cycle. Top Performers plan and then engage.  They act on their plans, they work hard and they get results.

Coaching these skills is a critical part of what we do.  We are here to help you develop and implement your Strategic Plan and coach and develop the skills to implement the plan successfully.

We are having great success coaching and implementing these methods and skills and our clients love it!