Time Management (TM) – Designing Your Ideal Day
Posted Monday October 15, 2007
7 Tips to Increase Your Efficiency
Whether you’re a salesperson or entrepreneur, you’re probably juggling tasks from mailing invoices to attending workshops to networking events…feeling overloaded as you flit from task to task. This is highly inefficient and stressful. So here’s Coach Nick’s new paradigm for managing your day differently, 7 ways.
TM Tip #1: Keep score.
Did you know that winning and losing is a habit? Well, it’s true. And anything can become a habit if you do it enough times (even losing). So, how do you make winning a habit for you? You keep a “Score Card” on the behaviors and activities that you know consistently produce results. After all, how do you know if you’re winning unless you keep score.
Imagine a game of golf, without keeping score. You tee up the ball, take your best shot and keep going until you get it in the hole. The other players do the same thing. But there is no score; you don’t know how many shots you’ve made, if you’ve improved, gotten worse, or if you’re doing better or worse than the competition. You’re just walking around and keeping busy with no idea of where you are, where you’ve been, or where you’re going.
But by keeping score, golfers know not only who is winning, but they can track their own successes over time. They religiously keep score, on a scorecard, and they keep the scorecards to compare with older ones. So too, should you keep score of your daily business activities so you can track your own success over time.
Keeping score is easy, it’s fun, and it’s a great tool to help you reward yourself while establishing the habit of winning. Most of the companies I have worked with use a “Sales-Person’s Score Card,” for one important reason - It works, and it works well.
The scorecard provides you with the ability to track your daily activities in the areas that are most important and can be used as a way to “self manage” yourself to ensure success and keep your winning mindset and behaviors going over time.
How do they work? Decide on the five activities you absolutely must do and that generate the highest return. Each success-building activity is assigned a score value, and a weekly total/objective of 25 points is set. For example, soliciting or receiving a referral, 4 points. The goal is to accumulate at least the total desire points in a week (25 point goal) through any one or combination of activities that are listed in the scorecard. Then, when the week’s points have been accumulated, you can determine if you in a better or worse position then you were before.
One key thing about the scorecard is that you choose which of the activities you will use to earn the minimum number of points each week. This way, you are working on your own personalized program that makes you Championship Seller! Call Coach Nick at 877- 52-COACH and get your TM scorecard sent to you!
TM Tip #2: Schedule time for your must-dos, treating these activities with the same respect and urgency as client meetings.
How? Map out how long each activity should take and allocate a time slot for each. Look at prospecting, for example. Start with your goals and work backwards. Let’s say you want to bring in $100,000 in new business each month and your average deal size is $30,000. We know from our client surveys that you have to make about 100 new phone calls to close one deal.
Here’s the math: You need to make 300 new business phone calls a month (3 deals x 100 dials per deal), which translates into 15 new business calls to new contacts a day (300 dials divided by 20 working days). Since each new phone call takes about 4 minutes (this is an average since some will take more and many will take less), this means you need to book 1 hour every day in your calendar for new business development phone calls.
Make a pact with yourself that each must-do is as sacrosanct as a client meeting. Schedule the time, and do everything in your power to adhere to your schedule.
TM Tip #3: Break your week into certain days for quotes, orders, follow-up calls, emails, and other days for appointments.
If you can give your undivided attention to the task at hand, you won’t be pulled in multiple directions and you’ll be much more effective. We recommend that you break your week into three types of days; 1) days where you only spend time in the field, 2) days where you only conduct administrative work, 3) days that you completely take off and reenergize. How do you deal with tasks that are out of sync with your day? Delegate to an assistant or colleague whenever possible, but be flexible at the same time.
TM Tip #4: Start your week on Friday and feel less pressured.
Look ahead to your week, consider what you need to accomplish, and spread it out over the week. Why? When you have a list of 20 different things to do in a day and you don’t get to all of them, you feel like a failure. If you spread the work over a week, you feel less pressured.
Plus, when you do your planning on Friday (the Friday before the coming week), the activities you intend to accomplish sit in your subconscious and become a part of who you are. In addition, you know exactly what you need to be doing, and you make a commitment to yourself and focus in on tackling those key tasks.
TM Tip #5: Convert Piles into Files.
When you convert piles into files, you find money that’s been lying around – leads, information to send to customers, and other opportunities. The majority of salespeople (60%) have over 1000 emails in their inbox, many unopened. Clutter can distract you from your must-dos and throw you off course, so get rid of clutter in your inbox…your office…your car.
TM Tip #6: Handle Things Once.
Follow the TRAF rule. T=toss or delete. R=refer or delegate (to customer service, your boss, a vendor, a spouse). If someone can do the job 75% as well as you, refer it. A=Action. This can be saying No! F=File. 80% of what’s filed is never used, so toss it whenever possible.
TM Tip #7: Watch your “miles.”
Consolidate tasks such as faxing and copying so you’re not chopping up your day. Even the illustrious Coach Nick reports he previously went downstairs to the Business Center every time he needed to print, which turned into a major time waster. Instead, buy a printer to minimize the time you leave your desk. And schedule appointments together that are in close proximity.
Many salespeople and entrepreneurs go into their day or their week with no concept of what they should be doing. Naturally, there’s little likelihood they will get the most important things done (live the seven listed above). So they fritter away their time filling out expense reports and typing into ACT.
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