It’s Time to Teach Time Management
I WAS FORTUNATE BECAUSE my first exposure to time management principles occurred in my twenties. My employer sent me to a time-management training course with a great instructor. I still remember a metaphor she used in teaching participants how to tackle big projects. She called it the Swiss cheese method.
Many of us avoid tackling the big projects, the ones with high payoff, because big projects look like a big block of cheese. You can’t eat this piece of cheese, or tackle a big project, at one seating. (Unless you’ve had a really bad day . . .) Her suggestion was to poke holes in big projects, make a big daunting task look like Swiss cheese. It was a great example of how to break down big projects into bite-size pieces.
Because of that early exposure to the value of time management, I’ve always taught simple principles of productivity to my sales teams. Time is finite. It levels the playing field because all salespeople get the same twenty-four hours in a day. Wise salespeople who learn good productivity habits use their time wisely.
I’ve heard more than one sales manager or salesperson proclaim that salespeople are disorganized—it’s just their nature. Sorry but I’m not buying that sales myth.
My anecdotal research suggests otherwise. My observation, in working with hundreds of top sales performers, is that really good salespeople possess great time management skills. They are masters at managing their calendars rather than the calendar managing them. That’s how and why they accomplish so much without stressing out and burning out.
Now you might be thinking. What—teach time management? I am a sales manager. My job is to educate my sales team on sales strategy and tactics. My “time” needs to be devoted to teaching my team how to fill the sales pipeline, run effective sales meetings, and close business.
Good luck with that thinking. Salespeople with poor time management skills don’t have time to apply your great coaching. They tend to operate in what the late Stephen Covey coined as the “tyranny of the urgent.” They spend all their time in instant-gratification activities that often produce below-average results. They don’t have time to:
• Execute a consistent sales activity plan, because there is no proactive time blocked on their calendar. Prospecting efforts are sporadic and sales results unpredictable.
• Master selling skills. Mastery requires proactively setting aside time to practice.
• Be creative. They are always busy putting out fires instead of thinking of ways to prevent repeatable fires.
I’ve coached hundreds of sales calls and it became evident to me many years ago that lack of time management skills is one of the reasons for poor sales results. Think of time management as priority management. Without it, many salespeople never get to their most important priority, which is called selling!
Time Management and Delayed Gratification
Salespeople with poor time management skills are stressed-out salespeople. As covered in the previous chapters, prolonged stress causes the body to produce cortisol, creating fatigue, lack of creativity—and ultimately lack of motivation. You can preach and teach sales all you want. But tired salespeople aren’t your most effective salespeople. The body always wins.
Salespeople with poor time management skills unknowingly fall prey to the busy-but-not-productive syndrome. You’ve managed this salesperson. She is a hard worker, always busy. This salesperson is no slouch. The problem is that this salesperson works harder, not smarter.
This salesperson operates in the instant gratification bucket, giving into the pull of what is easy. She constantly reacts to the latest distraction or request.
Instant gratification salespeople are busy responding immediately to emails and phone calls, prospecting, writing proposals, running sales meetings, and firefighting. But many of these same activities would create better sales results if salespeople invested more time in the delayed gratification bucket.
Consistent sales results happen when salespeople invest time in delayed gratification activities such as pre-call planning, studying, practicing selling skills, creating compelling value propositions, investing time with potential referral partners, as well as putting in systems and processes to prevent repeatable fires.
The challenge for sales managers and salespeople is that delayed gratification activities don’t have a pressing deadline. There is no urgency in finding time to execute these activities. But it’s the sales chicken-and-egg scenario again. When salespeople don’t invest time in delayed gratification activities, they fall into the trap of working harder, not smarter.
Take a look at the chart on the next pages and think about areas where your sales team is falling into the busy, not productive trap.
Salespeople with an Instant Gratification Mindset |
Salespeople with a Delayed Gratification Mindset |
Prospecting Calls and Outreaches |
Prospecting Calls and Outreaches |
Not effective because the salesperson didn’t invest time in analyzing whether or not this prospect fits the company ideal client profile. Keeps meeting with prospects who can’t or won’t buy. |
Effective because there was time invested to determine if this prospect fit the company’s ideal client profile. Achieves sales results because they are meeting with the right targets. |
Prospecting outreaches are deleted because they look and sound like every other salesperson. They’re really busy reaching out to prospects with canned, generic, and nonrelevant value propositions. |
Connect with prospects because they invested time in crafting prospecting messages customized for the buyer, industry, competitor gap, and pain point. They avoid one-size-fits-all value propositions. |
Referral Partner Meetings with Non-Competing Vendors |
Referral Partner Meetings with Non-Competing Vendors |
Not effective. The salesperson keeps meeting with potential partners that can’t or won’t refer the right type of business. |
Effective because the salesperson designed qualifying questions to determine if this potential partner can/will refer business. Questions such as: |
Your salesperson’s coffee partner doesn’t call on the C-suite. Keeps referring your salesperson to non-decision makers. |
Who and what level is their potential partner calling on? |
The salesperson’s coffee partner wins business on low price so only gives referrals to cheap, transactional prospects. |
Does this person sell on value or price? |
The salesperson’s referral partner is treated like a vendor, not a partner, by their clients. |
What is their relationship with their clients? |
Your salesperson receives the same treatment when given an introduction. |
Are they treated as a partner or a vendor? |
Your salesperson’s coffee partner doesn’t embrace the power of reciprocation. They are a taker, not a giver. |
Are they a giver or taker? |
Multitasking |
Multitasking |
Salesperson is checking email every five minutes or each time an alert pops up. |
Productive salespeople don’t! They’re effective because phone/email alerts are turned off. |
Never completes intentional work or focused work. And if they do, there are mistakes and rework. Completed work is average at best. |
They focus on one sales task at a time, completing the task in less time and the completed work is high-quality work. |
Conducting Sales Meetings with Prospects and Customers |
Conducting Sales Meetings with Prospects and Customers |
Ineffective because the salesperson didn’t take the time to engage in pre-call planning. He is winging the sales conversation rather than mastering and leading an effective conversation. |
Effective because the salesperson took the time to pre-call plan. Compelling questions are developed and asked during the sales meeting. |
He didn’t plan for objections so ends up defending and justifying, sending prospects into fight or flight responses. |
Didn’t get stumped by objections because the salesperson created a strategy for preempting or handling. |
Blows the call in the first five minutes because she didn’t adjust her communication style to match the prospect’s style. |
The salesperson identified the prospect’s personality style and adapts her approach to create rapport and trust. |
Stop the Madness
It’s easy for sales managers and salespeople to default to an instant gratification mindset. Blame it on your reptilian brain. Without self-awareness, this illogical part of your brain will ambush your day and calendar.
When the reptilian brain sees a bunch of emails piling up, it shouts, “Danger, danger . . . you are missing out on something. Danger, danger, you will never get caught up” (even though more than half of the messages can wait for a response or don’t deserve your attention at all).
There are great productivity experts out there, and I encourage you to hire them. But you can also start with some very basic time management principles that will make an immediate difference for your team. Time is finite and so is energy. These ideas will help your sales team maximize both.
Mind Map Your Way to Sales Success
I feel sorry for salespeople who haven’t been taught the basics of calendar blocking because it is a game changer. Without education, many salespeople mistakenly think that logging appointments and prospecting time on the calendar is enough. It’s not. Salespeople need to calendar block prep time, follow-up time, and white space time. You’ve heard the expression “the devil is in the details.” And this is really applicable when planning your week or month.
One of the best tools I use for calendar management is mind mapping. We teach this process in our sales management courses and it’s always a hit. Mind mapping is powerful because a salesperson can translate what is in his mind to a visual picture. The brain likes and understands pictures, so using this technique allows salespeople to organize information faster and better.
Include this mind mapping exercise at your next sales meeting. Warning, this is not a quick exercise, and you will be tempted to shortcut the process. Check your delayed gratification skills and put in the time to walk your sales team through the multiple steps. Adults learn by doing and mind mapping is one of those tools you can’t learn by hearing how to do it.
The reward is seeing your salespeople gain an understanding of why they aren’t getting everything done or why they are working long hours and still not achieving goals. See the steps in Figure 17.1.
FIGURE 17.1
1. Give each person on your team a large piece of flip chart paper. Have each salesperson draw a circle in the middle of the paper with the words “weekly calendar” written in the middle. (As they master this technique, they can move to a “monthly calendar.”)
2. Next, have each salesperson write down everything that needs to be accomplished that week. Have them create random circles around the main circle. The circles might include prospecting outreaches, sales meetings, existing client calls/meetings, creating a pursuit strategy for new prospects, account management review meetings, forecasting, and internal meetings.
3. Once the random circles are established, have each salesperson create branches off of the various circles to capture all the details that need to be completed in order to accomplish the specific task or sales activity. For example, a salesperson calendar blocks one hour for conducting a new prospect appointment. What she often doesn’t calendar block is:
Time to research the prospect.
Time to research the prospect’s existing vendor.
Time to create a customized value proposition to open up a consultative sales call.
Time to identify and think through potential objections and craft responses.
An existing client meeting circle might have branches that include:
Time to pull reports and analytics of sales.
Time to call the customer service department and check service levels/complaints.
Time to write out a new value proposition for the new line of business that will be introduced during the sales meeting.
4. Have your team add one more section to their mind map labeled “white space.” This square represents time on the calendar where nothing is scheduled. We all know that each day there are unplanned events that need to be dealt with. Salespeople get stressed out and feel their day spiraling out of control because they haven’t planned for these events, the predictable issues of business. Stop repeating the same mistake and set aside time to plan for the unplanned.
5. This next step is where the exercise gets interesting. Have each member of your team transfer the details from the flip chart to their calendars. Be prepared to hear complaints because this step takes time, thinking, and moving things around in order to organize and fit sales activities and tasks into their calendars. This step of the calendar blocking process is the commitment step. The salesperson is committing to a specific time on the calendar for completing an activity. No more winging it. They are proactively managing their time.
This type of thinking and planning helps your sales team gain hours back in their weeks. This creates more time for consistent prospecting outreaches and more effective sales meetings. Sales results improve as does your team’s happiness. A salesperson with good time management accomplishes more and stresses less.
The Effective Salesperson
Kathy is a top salesperson for a distribution company. Her territory is in the beautiful mountains of Colorado. However, with that beauty comes the added logistics of clients being spread out and at certain times of the year a lot of traffic.
One of the reasons for Kathy’s success is her ability to manage her calendar and still provide exceptional service to clients. At the time we worked with the company, it was not set up with a strong sales support function. This resulted in Kathy fielding most of the customers’ questions or concerns. I asked her how she managed juggling sales and customer service. Her answer reflected great impulse control and time management skills. “I’ve learned that most of the questions need an answer but the answer doesn’t mean I have to immediately pull over, call customer service, or check my computer. I always ask, ‘Can I get back to you at 3:00 p.m. today, when I am back in my office?’ The answer 90 percent of the time is yes. That allows me to focus on one thing at a time. I calendar block sales calls up to a certain time each day, then turn my focus to service and account management calls at the end of the day.”
Guard the Calendar and Your Impulses
Okay, the salesperson’s calendar is looking good. She’s captured and mind mapped the many details to run an effective week. Time is proactively blocked off for proactive prospecting.
Then life happens.
Your salesperson has been pursuing a prospect for weeks and finally connects with him. The salesperson does a great job on the exploratory call and asks if she can set a second meeting, a discovery meeting. The prospect agrees and says that he’s available on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. The salesperson looks at her calendar and sees that she has blocked 10:00 a.m. to noon on Tuesday for prospecting. But she is excited about this opportunity and deletes that prospecting time and replaces it with a new appointment. It’s the salesperson’s lucky day because another prospect returns the salesperson’s prospecting outreach and requests a meeting with the salesperson on Thursday at 1:00 p.m. This time was also calendared for prospecting but opportunity is knocking. The salesperson deletes her prospecting time block and schedules the new prospect meeting.
What’s wrong with the picture?
The calendar is running the salesperson rather than the other way around. One week of proactive prospecting has just gone out the window. Not because it wasn’t blocked on the calendar. It’s because the salesperson gave in to instant gratification and low self-control. The salesperson couldn’t manage her impulse to jump on a potential opportunity.
I am reading your minds and you are thinking, “Are you crazy? Take the appointment.”
Here’s the problem. If a salesperson keeps reacting, not honoring her calendar, she’ll end up with weeks without proactive prospecting. Inconsistent activity results in a dismal-looking, empty sales pipeline.
Raise your sales team’s awareness on impulse control and honoring their calendar. When I teach this concept, salespeople push back—hard.
“You don’t understand our business. My prospect wants that specific time and I’ve been trying to get ahold of this prospect for a month.”
Instead of arguing, I apply reality testing by asking a series of questions.
What would you say to a prospect who asked you for a 10:00 a.m. meeting on Tuesday and you already had that time scheduled to meet with your biggest and best client? Would you blow off your best client?
Or, would you respond to the prospect with, “I am sorry . . . I’m booked . . . can we look at another time?” Is the prospect going to get mad and say, “Well, if I can’t have that time, I don’t want any time at all?”
Light bulb. “Hmm . . . uh . . . no.”
What do you think the prospect will say?
Light bulb. “What else do you have available?”
Sales managers, teach your sales team to manage their calendars and impulses. It’s important that salespeople recognize times and triggers that lead to unproductive selling behaviors. Role-play with your team on this very concept so they can learn how easy it is to say, “I am booked . . . could we look at another time?”
I run into the same problem in managing my calendar. I have certain days and times of the week blocked specifically for delayed gratification activities such as writing, designing content, and practicing keynotes. Like every other salesperson on the planet, I also get requests to meet at those times. After experiencing too many weeks of an out-of-control calendar, I’ve learned to manage my impulses and desire to please. I redirect prospects and clients to dates and times on my calendar set aside for proactive selling conversations.
Time is finite and is one of your sales team’s most important assets. Every salesperson has the same twenty-four hours in a day. The successful ones know how to get the most out of their twenty-four hours.
Time to Get Up
This topic always creates a flurry of opinion with the night owls defending their schedules of late to bed and late to rise. I’ll let you come to your own conclusion, but the research leans toward the early-to-bed and early-to-rise habit. It will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise.
There is more interesting research from author Thomas C. Corley. In his five-year study of 177 self-made millionaires, he found that nearly 50 percent of them woke up at least three hours before their workday actually began. Well-known early risers include Apple CEO Tim Cook who starts his mornings at 3:45 a.m. Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi is up by 4:00 a.m and in the office by 7:00 a.m. Richard Branson is also part of the 5:00 a.m. club.
Research confirms the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is most active and readily creative immediately following sleep. Your mind is clearest in the morning and your energy is the highest. This is the best time of the day to invest in those delayed gratification sales activities that will grow your sales skills and sales results.
The first hours of the day are a great time for salespeople to engage in creative work such as writing a blog, crafting a series of compelling email messages, thinking of new ways to serve your clients, creating compelling posts for social media, and brainstorming smart questions that make prospects and customers think.
Unfortunately, a lot of salespeople wake up, hit the snooze button a few times, and rush hour begins, leaving no time for downtime. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that speed adversely affects creativity and work. We all admire innovation and disruptive ideas, but innovation can’t be rushed. If your sales team needs to think more creatively about solutions, it’s best accomplished by slowing down and allowing time for deep thinking. Get up!
The club of early risers shares that getting up early allows them time to read and study, helping them become a true trusted advisor. If you desire to build a sales team of thought leaders, make sure you are encouraging habits that lead to the exposure of new thoughts!
Salespeople who delay deep thinking to later in the workday may find it difficult to accomplish this goal. The brain is like any other muscle, and by afternoon the brain has been used in multiple conversations, decisions, internal meetings, and external meetings. It’s tired, and a tired brain is not a creative brain.
When I’ve made the mistake of scheduling deep-thinking work in the afternoon, I’ve discovered it takes twice as long and the quality of work isn’t as good.
This quote from Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, nicely summarizes the importance of time management. “Happiness is determined by factors like your health, your family, relationships, and friendships, and above all by feeling that you are in control of how you spend your time.”
Teach your sales team effective time management principles that free up their calendars and their brains. Time management is stress management and happiness management. It’s time to teach time management.
Sales Leaders EQ Action Plan
1. Identify areas where your sales team is falling into instant gratification activities rather than delayed gratification activities.
2. Carve out time to teach mind mapping at your next sales meeting.
3. Educate your sales team on the importance of self-awareness and impulse control in honoring their calendars. Role-play with your sales team on handling the predictable temptations that derail calendars.
4. Encourage your sales team to win the morning. Get up early and avoid hurried and harried starts to the day.
5. Model the behavior you expect. Are you running your calendar or is your calendar running you?
For more coaching tools and templates, visit www.EmotionalIntelligenceForSalesLeadership.com. We have additional exercises and questions for you to incorporate into daily sales conversations with your team.