One of the most surprising things I’ve encountered during my time in sales consulting is how many sales reps struggle with time management. From defining the highest-value sales activities to structuring an ideal sales week, many reps haven’t had strong leaders guide them through this process early in their careers. Now, as the selling environment becomes more challenging, they’re feeling the pain.
A helpful starting point is clearly defining our responsibilities and role as sales reps. When we have this clarity, it becomes easier to understand what an ideal sales week should look like.
Many wise sales leaders before me have pointed out that a sales rep’s job is to “create, advance, and close sales opportunities.” That’s it. That’s the job.
Of course, we understand that the world of business and less-than-ideal sales processes may require us to do things outside this definition. But if we use this principle as our guide, we can start to eliminate or say no to lower-value activities in our week. This allows us to prioritize and even double down on the highest-value activities.
Once we’ve identified the activities that enable us to create, advance, and close sales, we can start time-blocking our calendars to protect these activities from internal and external requests for our time.
For example, your ideal sales week might look something like this:
- Monday to Friday, 8-9 AM: Prospect new business
- 9 AM-2 PM: Client and sales engineering meetings
- 2-5 PM: Internal or non-sales meetings
- Fridays, 3-5 PM: Researching prospects for the next week’s prospecting calls
This schedule isn’t perfect, but it should get you thinking about how to build out your ideal sales week and prioritize your activities.Some helpful resources for this are Your 168 by Harry M. Kraemer and Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount. If you’re a sales leader, I encourage you to regularly work with your team to define what an ideal sales week should look like. If reps are struggling, this is often an area that leaders overlook when trying to identify the root cause of missed quotas.
Cheers!
