How to use Time Management as a Sales Resource

Time is money

As many of us who are wrapped up in the business world of sales know, time is money. We try to maximize our work efforts by going in to work earlier, and staying later, but how efficiently do we use time? Can it be that while it feels like we’re working longer, harder hours, we’re actually wasting precious time by working inefficiently? Can it be that all of our inefficient hard work can be negatively affecting sales volumes? Are we wasting time and money?

The answer is simply yes

The answer is simply yes. When tasks are not prioritized, our work lives can become chaotic, and overwhelmingly filled with unimportant minutiae that potentially interrupt completion of important reports or critical phone calls. This chaos or confusion will directly affect profitability as we miss the details of essential deals. Worse still, without proper time management, a salesperson or employee who treats all tasks as equally important, will get burned out and lose interest in the job, and become like a robot with no enthusiasm at all.

Prioritizing and managing time is key

Prioritizing and managing your time to get the important things done first will bring about a huge shift in sales volumes. Most importantly, the sales person will be able to focus on what he or she does best, which is sales. The trick however, is to learn how to prioritize tasks. The first step a person must take is to imagine their average workday, and then write down the tasks they are expected to accomplish.

Next, these tasks need to be divided into 4 categories: Important, Not Important, Urgent and Not Urgent. What makes time management so daunting is that if all urgent tasks are taken care of, important tasks might be completely ignored; so more classification is necessary. Therefore, the categories must be arranged in a time management quadrant, with Urgent and Not Urgent columns at the top, and with Important and Not Important rows below. Each task is placed in the appropriate quadrant, and what become quickly apparent are how all of the tasks can be prioritized, and how much relative time should be dedicated to each quadrant.

Categorizing tasks

Tasks that are important and urgent are the ones that should be taken care of first and given the most time, followed by the important, not urgent tasks. Urgent, unimportant tasks can be taken care of last, and finally, tasks that are unimportant and not urgent perhaps shouldn’t be considered at all. By eliminating the useless tasks and only giving a small amount of time to the unimportant and non-urgent issues, all of the focus can be placed on the important urgent and important tasks, and for salespersons in business that usually means going after sales and making clients happy.

Effective time management

Effective time management frees the salesperson from pointless meetings, unessential emailing and other tasks that can take their mind off sales. Salespeople must have time to do what they do best: sell, sell, and sell. Effective time management is a skill that must be a part of all sales training in order to boost a company’s bottom line. After all time is money, but effective time is even more money to the bottom line.