Being a
sales rep for a modular home factory is tough work, so why make it any harder. There
are enough things distracting you without having these 15 things wasting
your time:
1. Are you filling your pipeline?
You must fill your
pipeline with Prospects and not Suspects! Fill your pipeline
and qualify each of them into good leads or dead ends. Work with the good
prospects until you close the sale and move on to the next one, but
you must continue to fill the pipeline!
2. Do you have “Never Ending” meetings?
Too often you
schedule meetings for a specific time and pencil in about 15 minutes or 30
minutes or whatever and you end up spending (wasting) time going over and over
things until 15 minutes becomes 60. Stop
that. When you make an
appointment, tell your prospect that you need 10 minutes of their time and
stick to it. IF THEY want to keep
you there longer…Hurray! Success!
3. Too Much Unfocused Work?
Many of us spend
too much time working on things that aren’t really important. As
a sales rep, you have to know your basic goals. To help you stay focused, post up your
goals for the quarter or the year in your office and make sure that all the
work that you do is in line with reaching and completing those specific goals.
4. Are small distractions delaying Important Projects?
Just like the
little bee that flits from flower to flower, do you keep putting off important
projects because a “little project” caught your eye? Force
yourself to only work on big important projects in the morning. Mornings are the most productive time
you have, why waste it pollinating the little flowers and letting the big
flower die?
5. Are you too busy to be Productive?
You’ve got to decide what the most important part of your business is
each day. Is it
getting new builders signed up, making sales, pleasing you sales manager or
cold calling? Try to narrow your specific “goal driven activity”
for the day down to ONE and make sure you are doing what it
takes during the specified hours to reach the intended goal. Put all other
non-productive activities aside and do them during the “non-productive” hours
of the day.
6. Are you constantly checking your email?
Limit the number of times that you check e-mail during the day. Act on as many of the messages as you can
right away and try not to leave any to be dealt with “later,” because later is
always later and the message may never get dealt with. From experience, set
aside the times you will check your email and how long you want to devote to
answering them. Here’s a neat trick. If you read an email that you really want
to get back to later, select “Mark as New” so you will give it the attention it
needs later.
8. Do you have a Daily Plan?
Create a user
friendly TO DO list. Take 5 minutes at the END of
the day and create the NEXT DAY’S TO
DO list. List all
of the things you are already committed to for the day with times, places etc,
at the top of the page. Underneath, cluster things into categories: e-mails,
phone calls, writing projects, appointments, etc. Only put on the list those
things you truly expect to accomplish that day, and have phone numbers,
addresses, next to the items. Print that out and have in front of you when you
sit down at your desk in the morning. Do things in clusters. In
the morning before doing ANY task, read what your top 4-6 tasks are. It’s got to be a “NO KIDDING”
list. Even having to return 1 phone call counts as 1 task.
9. Are Some Builders Wasting Your Time?
Get rid of them!
Some builders simply cannot be satisfied. Identify which builders are your most
problematic and look at the effort/profit
ratio. Often times the loudest complainers are your smallest customers.
Consider not working with them not as a sacrifice of a small amount of revenue, but rather freeing up big chunks of
time. Let competing sales reps have them, it will drive them crazy!
10. Do You Let People waste your time?
As I’ve mentioned
before, some people love to talk on the phone and don’t seem to care that your
time is money. Use this line when the conversation is getting too long and you
have to get things done. “I actually have to be back to work in 2-3 minutes,
can I call you later?” This
sets a definite “time limit” in the mind of the other person that you have to
make an exit soon.
11. Are you constantly playing phone tag?
Let your builders
know that they can best reach you at certain hours and let all other calls go
to voicemail outside of those hours. It will only take a short time before your builders
know that this really works for you and them.
12. Are you wasting time on the Internet?
Ditch the Internet
altogether on your primary business PC or if that is impractical, limit your
“Internet browsing” to a certain time each day on your business computer. If
you Facebook twelve times a day, then you
already know that you can lose hours before you realize it.
13. Are you constantly Bitching?
Negativity is the number one productivity killer. If you constantly bitch about what didn’t get done, what should have happened and what
someone did wrong, you’re heading for problems. Get
over it! You’ll
live longer.
14. Do you take too much time to make a decision?
If you do, it
means you haven’t set clear criteria or are missing critical information.
Just ask yourself one question – “If I do this, will it move me closer to my business
goals, vision or mission?” Then make your decision and
move on.
15. Do you have an friend that really understands you?
You really should! You need to check with each other 3 times
a week to be sure you stay on track and don’t waste time. Sometimes just a
short email is all it takes. Remember, no sales rep is an island!
