Time Management Skills are Essential

Submitted by Mitch Seigel on Tue, 11/22/2011

Just four months ago I wrote the blog on the importance of time management skills. I feel it is so important toward your success in sales or as a sales department that I want to repeat the blog, with some enhancements. Time management always seems to be one of the most difficult parts of the sales process to tackle for most salespeople. The over achievers know that it is also the most important part of the process and how you are able to grasp the concept, in most cases, leads directly to either being a failure or a success.

Here are the nine steps to successful time management.

1. Be prepared to work at it every day! It’s not something that goes away, and because of last minute changes in your schedule, in most cases caused by customers, you have to be flexible to adjust when needed. You are like a firefighter, putting out fires or a dancer who needs to improvise on the dance. It’s not a process for the faint of heart.

2. Be organized so you can stay on top of it. Have some kind of a system, whether it is electronic or not, you have to know where you’ll be spending your time each and every moment. Stick to the schedule you set-it is so easy to disregard plans.

3. Don’t procrastinate to make updates and changes to your schedule. The longer you wait to do things, the more your schedule gets off kilter. Work on this daily.

4. Always have access to some form of your calendar when you are away from the office. The world moves so quickly today that you can’t afford to miss an opportunity because you have to check your calendar, and it is not in your possession. Take your smart phone with you and in worst case scenario, make a copy of your written calendar to have in a meeting.

5. Work with others around you to also have good time management so you can be in sync. It is always upsetting when you are not able to coordinate with a group of people because one or two of the people just don’t have a pulse on their own schedule. While you can not totally control other people’s habits, you can make choices of who to work with based on minimal loss of time. Look for those who you would see in a mirror.

6. Set up a regular schedule for items or actions you repeat each week. For example, always prepare for your week on Sunday evening, or always make outbound calls from 9 to 10am before going on the road, or do your paperwork outside of business hours. This makes it easier to repeat rather than being different each week.

7. Always look for ways to improve the way you use your time. It could be a new personal device or possibly a sales process system you discover, but there’s always got to be a better way. You only have so much time in the day and week, and it needs to be used wisely.

8. Try to learn about time management from a variety of people. Taking one person’s word for it may not be what is good for you. Read books and articles or talk with others, and see what they do to stay on top of time management.

9. Lastly, if you are not good with time management, it may be wise to hire someone to keep you organized. Whether you are in sales or not, managing your time is worth money, lot’s of it!

What are your challenges when it comes to time management? I look forward to hearing your comments. Until next time …