As a sales person, if you aren't focused on doing the right things at the right time you lose financially. Or you work yourself to death trying to hit your targets. But, if you’ll do a little planning before you take action you can have the financial rewards you want without working unnecessarily hard.
Ideally you want the majority, if not all, of your actions to take you closer to a paycheck. Prospecting is how you fill your sales funnel, but all too often sales people have a haphazard approach to prospecting. A better approach is to develop a list of your most desired future customers. When you know who you’re focusing on it’s easier for you to develop effective ways to approach them.
Keep a running on-going list of all the next actions you need to take. As you look at this list decide on the actions you’ll take and when you’ll take them based on the likelihood of that action resulting in a paycheck for you. You can’t do everything and you certainly can’t do everything at once, so prioritize your top three actions each day.
Hopefully you have both a large list of prospects and a large list of customers, and both need your attention. Develop a system to stay in front of both exceeding their expectations, deepening the relationship, and motivating them to refer you. Keep it simple, but have a clear objective for every contact.
Plan out exactly how you want to connect with both your prospects and customers throughout the year. Then identify ways to make this contact as automatic as possible. And include ample opportunities for them to reach out to you when they’re ready to make a purchase faster.
You know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Now you have to commit to taking right action. Take at least three actions each day that move you closer to a paycheck. Do this day in and day out, and you’ll have both time and money.
To get the results you want you have to take action, and you want those actions to become almost automatic. Make your new time management skills a habit by repeating them on a daily basis. The more you take these right actions the easier it will be for you, and the more motivated you’ll be to continue them.
Going back to that list of all the next actions you need to take, as you look over your list you’ll realize you have things on your list that you don’t necessarily have to do. There are probably a lot of things on your list you do out of habit, or because you’re afraid to delegate them. You want to ruthlessly dump everything on your list that isn’t essential for you to do.
Ready to get unstuck? Take the Time Management Skills Quiz and the Success Skills Quiz to see where you can make improvements.