When I talk to sales reps who aren’t hitting their numbers it usually comes down to a lack of activity, in other words, they aren’t making enough calls to get the prospects and ultimately make the sales. “I don’t have enough time” is the biggest excuse I hear regarding why they aren’t making the necessary calls. Not having enough time can be due to a few factors. Here they are and here’s what you can do about them.
3 Time Hurdles and What to Do
Time Hurdle #1: There Really Isn’t Enough Time
This is the person being pulled in too many directions, they have too many non-sales items on their plate. These items could be service or administrative items, putting out too many fires, leadership responsibilities, and, in general, anything other than sales activities: prospecting, presenting, closing, and some high-level servicing of your most important accounts.
Many salespeople do this to themselves by over servicing accounts and doing paperwork and other administrative items that others can and should do. Other salespeople have these items forced upon them either by management or a lack of company support.
If this is self-imposed, you have to stop doing what you shouldn’t be doing: non-sales tasks others should be doing, and start doing what you should be doing: making more calls and more sales. If someone else is requiring you to do non-sales items that are taking up too much of your time, you have to talk to that person and either get some or all of these items off your plate, or have your job redefined and make the proper adjustments to pay, sales quota, and other expectations.
Time Hurdle #2: Other Priorities
At worst, this is the person who doesn’t have time to make calls and hone their sales skills, but has time to go out drinking with friends three or more nights a week, play golf multiple times during the week, and knows exactly what happened in last night’s baseball game.
At best, this is the person who helps get the kids off to school in the morning, is home by five for dinner, dedicates nights and weekends to family and other personal items, and as a result, simply isn’t putting enough hours into selling and/or their job.
While the latter situation sounds better, and probably is, if the net result is not meeting your sales goals and expectations, your career needs to become more of a priority. Sales is not a 9 to 5 job especially for the first five years in any industry, and anytime you’re not hitting your numbers. The disproportionate time commitment needs to be understood by the salesperson and communicated by the salesperson to all interested parties including family members and friends. While it’s great to be there for all the family activities, have fun, and hang out with your friends, and that’s the ultimate goal down the road, not pulling your weight and not doing what you’re getting paid to do doesn’t set a good example, and losing your job isn’t good for anyone involved.
By the way, the number one reason for failure in sales is simply not putting in the necessary hours to learn sales and make the necessary calls. A 15% increase in hours worked has shown to increase production as much as 40%.
Time Hurdle #3: Overall Poor Time Management
Most salespeople aren’t great when it comes to time management. Here are some tips to improve your time management:
· Study time management. If you read some books and take some courses, you’ll most likely pick up some good tips that will help you significantly improve how you manage your time. Find people who manage their time well and learn from them.
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Have specific sales goals including one for daily sales activity and put a plan together to make those goals a reality.
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Have the self-discipline to stick to your plan. Your number one priority is getting your daily activity done.
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Get organized. Put everything in its place. Keep like things together. Develop policies, procedures, and systems for things that are done repetitively. As I suggested with time management, study organization too. Read a few good books and take some courses. Also, find someone who’s organized and find out what they do.
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Find out where you’re wasting your time. Keep a time log for two weeks and keep track of where you spend your time during the day. No, this won’t take more time, it will actually save you time because you’ll stop doing things you shouldn’t be doing because you don’t want to write them down.
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Work hard and work smart. Work when you’re at work, don’t waste time. Develop a sense of urgency and try to get through things quickly. Also, follow the 80/20 Rule. This rule states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities. Do your best to work mostly on those 20% during the day. Find the quickest, most efficient ways to do things. Finally, don’t do non-time sensitive items during prime calling times.
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Come up with your most important tasks for the next day the night before and prioritize those activities. You should have a maximum of six to ten priority items. Do your best to get those activities done before anything else.
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Eliminate and ignore distractions. Shut off e-mail and voicemail notifications and only check them four or five times during the day. Put signs up, close your door, say ‘no’, and don’t get sucked into useless conversations or sidetracked by people who simply want to waste time.
