“I am definitely going to take a course on time management…just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.” – Louis E. Boone
The members of your sales team may be great at converting leads, but are they equally good at time management? If you said no, your team’s poor time management skills may be costing you money and business.
The people responsible for selling your products must be efficient as well as persuasive. Otherwise, leads may slip through the cracks and vital steps in the sales process may be forgotten or neglected.
Teaching your salespeople effective time management skills doesn’t have to be an elaborate, complicated affair, All you really need to do to enhance productivity is convey a few simple principles.
Establish Priorities
Teach your team to prioritize the most important parts of the sales process such as finding leads, following up with leads, and maintaining ongoing relationships with customers through customer relationship management, or CRM.
As importantly, educate your team about common time wasters such as spending too much time on social media or email and taking on assignments that are low priority or that should be delegated.
Set Challenging Goals
Coach your team to set challenging but realistic goals and to come up with a plan for meeting those goals. For instance, if the goal of one salesperson is to make 50 cold calls per week, the plan might be to make ten cold calls every morning between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.
Protect Dedicated Time
Teach your team different strategies to protect time that they’ve set aside for important activities. One helpful strategy, for instance, is using an email autoresponder with a message along the lines of, “Thank you for your email. I am tied up right now, but I will respond by the close of business today.” Another strategy might be telling a chatty co-worker, “I don’t have time to talk right now. Let’s finish this conversation over lunch.”
Use Sales Automation to Enhance Productivity
Sales automation devices like autoresponders, video conferencing, and customizable CRM software can save your sales team a lot of time. They can also help you avoid the problem of leads slipping through the cracks during the sales process.
Just learning a few simple time management techniques can help enhance your sales team’s effectiveness and productivity. Start teaching them these useful tools today.
