10 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople: Gain the Competitive Edge and Make Every Second Count

By Dave Kahle

The typical salesperson today is overwhelmed, trapped in a chaotic, pressure-filled environment with too much to do and not enough time to do it. Salespeople need help! This book provides it. Dave Kahle contends that smart time management is not about cramming more activity into each hour; but about achieving greater results in that hour. The content has been honed in hundreds of seminars and refined by the perceptions and experiences of thousands of salespeople. 10 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople provides powerful, practical insights and ideas that really work, including hundreds of specific, practical, effective time management tips from dozens of salespeople who are on the "front lines" every day. The author, Dave Kahle, has been the number-one salesperson in the country for two different companies in two distinct industries. He's presented seminars throughout the world, published more than 400 articles, and authored three books and 32 multimedia training programs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 1, 2002
• ISBN: 9781601639042

Dave Kahle

Dave Kahle has been the top salesperson in the nation for two companies in two distinct industries. He has authored nine books, presented in 47 states and nine countries, and has personally and contractually worked with more than 300 companies to help them increase their sales. Specializing in the B2B environment, Dave creates customized training programs, speaks at national conventions, and consults in areas of sales system design and sales force compensation. He splits his time between Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Sarasota, Florida. You can connect with him at www.davekahle.com.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction:

It’s a Daily Battle!

Benefits of smart time management

Obstacles in the way

Introduction to the 10 secrets

The First Time Management Secret:

Get Grounded!

A mindset that provides energy for your efforts

How do you get the More mindset?

The basic time management strategy

Crystallizing your values

Start with a list

Why bother?

The Second Time Management Secret:

Think About It Before You Do It!

The planning cycle

Annual planning retreat

Quarterly planning sessions

Monthly planning sessions

Weekly plans

Daily plans

Pre-call review

Post-call reflection

The Third Time Management Secret:

Think Right!

Thinking processes for effective time management

Analyzing

Prioritizing

Planning

Imaging

Reflecting

The Fourth Time Management Secret:

Prioritize Your Customers and Prospects!

Why you get better results by focusing on a few high-potential accounts

Defining high-potential

Determining potential

One level deeper

Calculating partnerability

Measuring partnerability

Putting the two together

Rating QPC

Developing ABC categories

The Fifth Time Management Secret:

Stay on Top of the Flow!

1. Constantly reprioritize

2. Stay close to the money

3. Prepare to make good use of uncontrollable downtime

4. Don’t always immediately react

5. Qualify and prioritize every opportunity

6. Learn to say no

The Sixth Time Management Secret:

Clean out the Gunk!

Salesperson’s gunk

How to de-gunk your routines

Preventing future gunk buildup

The Seventh Time Management Secret:

Create Systems!

Managing information

Customers and prospects

Competitor files

Tickler files

Product files

Other files

Systems thinking

The Eighth Time Management Secret:

Stick to an Effective Sales Process!

Benefits to using a sales process model

The Target System

Using the sales process as a time management tool

For a new product or service introduction

Multiple projects in a single customer

The Ninth Time Management Secret:

Nurture Helpful Relationships!

For what tasks can you enlist help?

Who can you enlist to help?

Continually seek things to download

Sell everyone

Download well

The Tenth Time Management Secret:

Stay Balanced!

Life sails for the salesperson

Life keels for the salesperson

In balance

About the Author

10 Secrets of

Time Management

for Salespeople

GAIN THE COMPETITIVE EDGE AND

MAKE EVERY SECOND COUNT

By

Dave Kahle

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Copyright © 2003 by Dave Kahle

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

10 SECRETS OF TIME MANAGEMENT FOR SALESPEOPLE

EDITED BY NICOLE DEFELICE

TYPESET BY EILEEN DOW MUNSON

Cover design by Johnson Design

Printed in the U.S.A. by Book-mart Press

To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press.

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The Career Press, Inc., 3 Tice Road, PO Box 687,

Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417

www.careerpress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kahle, Dave J.

   10 secrets of time management for salespeople : gain the competitive edge and make every second count / by Dave Kahle.

        p. cm.

Includes index.

   ISBN 1-56414-630-8 (pbk.)

eISBN : 9781601639042

     1. Selling. 2. Time management. I. Title: Ten secrets of time management for salespeople. II. Title.

HF5438.8.T54 K34 2003 658.85—dc21

2002073350

Introduction:

It’s a Daily Battle!

Remember the television commercial of the salesperson driving down the expressway with a cell phone balanced on his shoulder, a cup of coffee in one hand, and a laptop computer teetering on the dashboard? The voice in the background says, You know he’s out there.

That’s a frightening commercial because of the element of truth in it. The life of a salesperson these days is a battle with an overwhelming number of things to do, ever rising expectations, and conflicting pressures.

While this has always been the case for field salespeople, in recent years the pressures have increased dramatically on every aspect of the salesperson’s job. Customers are more sophisticated, more demanding, and harder to see. Voice mail has compounded the difficulty of the salesperson’s job, making it necessary to be constantly on the phone. Whereas a few years ago a salesperson could visit a customer without an appointment, getting that appointment today adds multiple phone calls to the salesperson’s job. Each phone call is one more task and one more small investment of time in an already full day.

The products and services offered by many salespeople have expanded in quantity and sophistication. As companies strive to meet the fracturing demands of their customers, the number of items sold has increased proportionately. I just finished a phone call with a sales manager who described a typical situation. His company, previously a software publisher with one basic product, had recently purchased a competitor. The combined sales force now has 11 products to sell. Every time a new product or service is introduced, it must be learned, the information must be filed, the presentation organized, etc. All of these things take time out of the salesperson’s day. A salesperson with 10 things to sell must spend much more time dealing with information and organization than one with half as many offerings.

So, not only are customers’ demands and the increasing number of products and services adding more pressure to the salesperson, but also the companies for whom they work are chipping in with additional demands. Salespeople are being asked to collect more information about their customers, report in more sophisticated ways, use more complex computer programs, and take part in more meetings than ever before.

The concept of the field salesperson as part of a team is growing more common. All that communication with team members adds more tasks to the salesperson’s already long list. Each new task is an additional investment of time.

No wonder typical field salespeople feel like the weight of the world is pressing down on them. Their jobs have become overwhelming. Field salespeople are working more hours and as a result, feeling more stressed. Personal relationships fracture as spouses, children, and significant others are neglected. Production suffers as salespeople are confronted with too much to do and not enough time in which to do it.

At the same time, traditional time management guidelines have little application for the field salesperson. A few years ago, I watched a time management guru present a two-day seminar at an annual sales meeting for the company for which I worked. This university professor conveyed principle after principle of time management—all very appropriate if you worked in an office all day long, but very inappropriate if you were a field salesperson. The audience of field salespeople became more and more frustrated as the seminar progressed. Finally, one of my colleagues stood up and said, You don’t understand. We don’t get interruptions, we are the interrupters!

Clearly, most of the time management principles and tactics presented by this and other gurus totally miss the unique challenges of the field salesperson.

All of this may be moot if it doesn’t impact you. So, before you read any further, reflect on whether you personally feel the weight of any of these pressures. Complete the assessment below:

1. Has the quantity of the products or services you sell increased in the last few years?

2. Have those products or services become more complex and sophisticated?

3. Are your customers more difficult to see today than they were three years ago?

4. Does voice mail give you fits?

5. Do your customers expect you to set appointments rather than just stop in?

6. Are customers more pressed for time when you see them?

7. Does your company require you to collect more information today than it did a few years ago?

8. Are you expected to complete more forms and attend more meetings, either in person or electronically, than previously?

9. Are you expected to work more closely with others in your organization, perhaps even be part of a team?

10. Do you find yourself working longer and harder than you did a few years ago?

11. Are your personal relationships suffering as a result of your stress and hours on the job?

12. Are you worrying about your personal performance?

A yes answer to any one of these is reason enough to focus on improving your time management skills. If you answered yes more than three times, you are ripe to crash and burn. Drop everything and read the rest of this book now!

Benefits of smart time management

Imagine that you have waved a magic wand and transformed yourself into a time management expert. You are now totally in control of your days, working at the most effective things, delegating wisely, and calmly producing excellent results. What would that mean to you?

How about your personal life? Wouldn’t you have more time for the things you enjoy? Your spouse, kids, or friends would see you more often, and you would be less preoccupied with all the work stuff that fills your head. You’d get your life back!

Not only that, but you’d probably be healthier. You’d sleep better, your blood pressure would be lower, and you’d be and less anxious. It could add years to your life.

But what about your career? What would be the impact on your production?

As a veteran sales trainer, I can honestly report that improving your management of time will bring you positive results more quickly than any other single aspect of your job. That is because effective time management frees you. That’s right, frees you. You unburden yourself of the countless petty tasks that fill your day. You cast off the shackles of the stuff you have to do, and instead, luxuriate in doing those things that you are good at, that give you joy, and that bring you the best results.

A number of years ago, I was impressed with the book Soar With Your Strengths by Donald Clifton and Paula Nelson. The premise of the book is that you are always more effective if you unleash your strengths than if you focus on overcoming your weaknesses. This is particularly true of salespeople, who have the ability to determine, to a large degree, how they spend their days.

Effective time management allows you to eliminate those things you must do that wear you down, sap your spirit, and weary your psyche—those weakness-generated tasks. Instead, you exercise your strengths, having become free of the burden of unpleasant minutia! And that always brings you more passion and better results.

The benefit of all of this is increased results, and more joy and fulfillment in your job and your life.

Obstacles in the way

If effective time management is such a powerful tool, why don’t all salespeople naturally focus on it? Why do we struggle with it so much?

First, it’s important to note that the really good salespeople are effective time managers. A few years ago, the National Society of Sales Training Executives published the results of a major research study. The study attempted to identify the characteristics of the superstar salespeople, across a variety of industries and products. They discovered that the nation’s best salespeople had a number of characteristics in common. One was that they were obsessed with time management. That was in the 1990s before today’s heavy onslaught of stuff to do attacked the field salesperson. Imagine how much more of an impact effective time management has today.

So why is this such a big issue? Why aren’t salespeople natural time managers?

The workday of the field salesperson, by its very nature, is unpredictable and constantly changing. It is not like you go to an office every day and methodically chip away at whatever is in your inbox. One day you may be working on one side of town, and the next on the other side of town. You may be calling on production supervisors in noisy manufacturing companies in the morning, and suit-and-tie CEOs in the afternoon. You may start out with five solid appointments, and have the first one call in sick, and the second be too busy to see you. Your most meticulous plans can be wiped out by an urgent call from a customer. Every day is an adventure for a field salesperson, often brimming over with the unpredictable ebb and flow of communications with dozens of people intensely pursuing their own agendas.

While, on one hand, most salespeople find this unpredictable kaleidoscope exhilarating, on the other, it’s a major problem that presents unique challenges for managing time.

Here’s another unique complication. Field salespeople, to a degree greater than almost any other job, are responsible for how they spend their time. Managers typically work in an office, where there is some accountability for their time. If their boss isn’t around, their employees are, and they know what that manager has done all day. Goof off half the day and someone knows. This is true for the vast majority of jobs. Service people fill out meticulous job orders detailing how and where their time was spent. Inside salespeople, customer service people, purchasing agents, warehouse personnel, production people, are all accountable for their time, and to some degree, someone else dictates how their time will be spent.

This is not true for most field salespeople. You can probably take an afternoon off once a week, and it will be some time before anyone catches up with you. For the most part, you are the one who decides where to go, who to see, and when to do it. It’s your decision to spend a half-day in the office every week, to do your paperwork at night, or to visit your good customers every other week.

Again, this independence is one of the aspects of the job that most field salespeople highly treasure. It’s a powerful attraction for a lot of people. However, it brings with it enormous responsibilities. If you are independent and able to make your own choices about how you spend your time, then you must be more disciplined and attentive to time management than people who work in other jobs.

Here’s another major obstacle unique to field salespeople: ourselves! The typical field salesperson has a personality that is inclined toward action. We like to be active, we like to be out and about, driving here, going there, and having 10 balls in the air at the same time. We find the rush of one thing after another to be exhilarating. We thrive on action.

Not everyone has that personality characteristic. But field salespeople generally do. That means that given the choice, we would rather get into our car and go someplace than sit in the office and think about it. That inclination towards activity is an obstacle. It causes us to go without necessarily