50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #2 – The First Thing Each Day

September 18, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #2 – The First Thing Each Day

Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let’s look at Habit #2 – The First Thing Each Day: The first function of each day is to review a daily calendar and decide which tasks you will do and move tasks that will not be done that day to another day.

Habit 1 is about task development to maximize time invested daily, weekly and monthly and Habit 2 continues the focus on time management by defining what tasks are done each day with the hours available.Sales people are typically aggressive in nature and often have large tasks lists that contain more “things” than they can do in a day.  Knowing how important each hour of the day is, it is critical to focus that time on the tasks that have to be accomplished each day and finding ways to deal with the ones that will not get done.  Managing these tasks is not easy for many sales people and it is common for them to leave the hard work or the tasks they do not particularly like to do for later and before they know it the day is gone and some important tasks are not completed.

The world is full of task management methods and software and virtually all sales people have some sort of “task Management” software on their computer, tablet and/or smart phone with the ability to sync across all their tools.  Using this task management software effectively is what Habit 2 is about.Think about your task lists, how many of your tasks are in red?  Now imagine a task list with only a few tasks and no red ones for each day.  Which list is a better management tool?  Which list will provide the best direction?  Which list has the best chance of being complete at the end of the day?  Which list will provide the most motivation for getting up and going at it each day?  These and other questions demonstrate the need for management of the task list and can help sell the idea of the importance of defining what really needs to be on one’s task list and why it is so important to manage it.

This leads to the obvious question – “what do you do with tasks you do not have time for today”?  The answer is quite simple, move them, delegate them or delete them.  There will be tasks each day that have to be done and other tasks have to be considered on a case by case basis and then proactively acted upon.  Delete any task that is no longer of value.  Move tasks to another day that do not absolutely have to done today.  Assign tasks that can be delegated to somebody else and follow-up to verify that the task is completed.  This process can take time to develop and perfect but once it becomes the normal operating procedure, “A Habit”, it is not work but just the thing that is done every day.

TIME MANAGEMENT.  For Top Performers every task is planned and focused on the goals that earn the results.  Top performers plan time to manage their tasks to focus their efforts and maximize the utilization of their time with and on their customers.  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!