Habit 48: Place the “Target Account” list into a 90 day calendar

February 27, 2018 Selling Comments Off on Habit 48: Place the “Target Account” list into a 90 day calendar

To continue with the “Account Development Habits”, let’s look at Habit 48: Place the “Target Account” list into a 90 day calendar.

Last month’s newsletter talked about sorting the “Target Account” list geographically. This month, let’s look at placing the “Target Account” list into a 90 day calendar.

Start with a rule of thumb: call on customers and key prospects four times per year and utilize your geographically sorted “Target Account” and customer lists. With this strategy, it is easy to start building your 90-day calendar. Of course, there are customers and prospects that you will want to call on more or less often than four times per year. Simply adjust this for your planned sales calls and in your calendar.

The key to a successful 90-day calendar is to break it in into three 30 day planning segments. Each week, drop one week off and move another week into each 30 day planning horizon. Each 30 day planning segment has a different focus and use and while it is not common to have appointments confirmed 60 and 90 days out, you will at times and definitely can and need to 30 days out.

• The 1-30-day segment should contain firm appointments that you have and plan to have including targeted cold calls around your appointments.
• The 30-60-day segment should have planned appointments that you are actively starting to contact.
• The 60-90 day segment should have planned appointments.
• Typically, the 30-60 day segment will have less appointments planned than the 1-30 day segment and the 60-90 day segment even less, but the key is to have a plan that you can work as you are talking with customers and prospects. Your aim is to utilize and control your most valuable resource – your time.

The planning will consist of time dedicated to general “office work”, follow-up and planning, personal time off, company activities and meetings, travel time, customer visits, prospective customer visits, training and the like.

Each must be placed in your calendar so you know what you are doing and when. As you build your calendar, the days and times available for visiting and calling on customers and prospects will take shape.

Start assigning cities or parts of cities to specific days using your geographically based lists. Then assign locations to the days, using anchor appointments with key customers and prospects and then fill in other appointments, planned appointments and targeted cold calls around these.

You’ll find that your calendar will quickly begin to fill up and after doing this for a while, it is common to have your days booked to the point that you must work to fit people in. This is a great thing because it makes you proactive and you become the owner of your time.

You decide what you do and when. You decide when to see somebody that calls and wants your time. You decide who you move to another day to free up time for an emergency and proactively work to reschedule as needed.

You will be amazed how many people will work around your schedule when they value your time and the key to successful sales is great time management. It is also amazing how you will sell more of what you want to people you want to sell to when you are in control.

When you have nothing but time in your day, you can react to anything and anybody. When your time is planned, you must be selective of who you see and when.

Qualifying leads and time with people becomes a normal activity and when done correctly, puts you in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the situation.

The key is to be proactive and plan so you know where you are going and you can maximize your time in front of the right prospects.

Habit 48: Place the “Target Account” list into a 90-day calendar.

“A Habit” is not work, but just a thing that is done every day and placing the “Target Account” list into a 90-day calendar is critical to your success in sales and can easily become a Habit.

TIME MANAGEMENT. For Top Performers, every task is planned and focused on the goals that earn the results. 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.