8 Tips For Better Time Management In Sales

Ignoring the importance of time management might not be a good idea, especially in sales. Sales managers want quality results in a short period, and as a salesperson there’s always the incentive to be the “yes man” and squeeze in that extra scheduled phone call or two during the day. However, without proper time management, things can go south in no time. Pretty soon, you’ll be balancing multiple clients at once, and can fall short of assisting all of them. It’s understandable that sales can be a very hectic job and requires constant motivation. Time management and sales tasks management make the sales process consistent and doable. Though it might not take the frustration out of it, it still helps a sales rep push back the pressure and keep on succeeding with regular sales tasks.

We’ve put together 5 simple ways to control the distractions that take away from your sales process and hold everything together for a successful work week.

Five simple ways to save your valuable selling time!

1) Schedule your prospecting blocks!

Prospecting is the key activity for your outbound sales process. For some sales reps, it might be challenging to narrow down when to prospect, due to an overburdening of other relevant sales activities. Sending out prospecting emails and cold calling at random times throughout the day might groove more with your overall sales process. However, these tasks won’t get done unless you can strategically apply time to them, so when scheduling your prospecting activities, find the best time to reach out to each and every prospect, even if this means breaking your outreach down into short 45 minute blocks throughout the day.

2) Utilize a Daily Checklist

Breaking down your day into manageable chunks is a great way to stay organized and focused. Check out our 13-step Daily Checklist for SDRs for inspiration to create your own!

3) Always check your Emails!

Missing out on your emails is something no sales rep can afford. You should define 3 to 4 times in between your job time to check and reply to your important emails.

4) Manage your calendar weekly!

If you spend 5 minutes of your time in managing your calendar at the beginning of every week, this will help you stay on top of potential time conflicts. Beyond managing your weekly events, check every day for special events out of your daily norm – you don’t want to miss an important meeting!

5) Use sales software that keeps you organized!

If you are caught up with dozens of sales tools, very soon you won’t be able to manage your sales activities the way you should. Using multiple tools and services decreases your efficiency. However, by utilizing a single platform for all your sales activities, all your leads and sales related tasks live in the same place. This increases your sales productivity and makes task prioritization easy, achievable and consistent.

Fileboard Workflow is the best tool for sales productivity and prospecting. Set and forget your sales cadence with automated workflows, get notified of the best times to follow up, and get valuable insights into how your prospects engage with our outreach!

The Importance of Time Management

Improper time management hurts more salespeople than you might realize. According to Cirrus Insights, a majority of salespeople spend less than half of their time selling. In most of the cases, salespeople spend anywhere between 15% to 20% of their time selling. With salespeople responsible for dozens of other tasks besides sales, it usually ends up eating the time they should have spent on selling.

Similarly, according to Alice Heiman LLC, “salespeople need to spend more than 39% of their time selling, but other activities pull them away,” Heiman said. “Hopefully, some of that email time is advancing a sale.”
A few of the task and role prioritization issues that tend to take salespeople away from giving enough time to their sales activities.

Time Management Lets You Get Back to Actually Selling

Three issues that burn your sales time!

1) Lost Focus: In most of the cases with an inexperienced salesperson, they end up mixing their sales roles with other roles like inbound marketing and related fields. This leads to a change in focus and eats away most of their selling time.

2) Role Confusion: This is a nightmare in the sales profession. A salesperson’s main job is to initiate, nurture and maintain relationships that can end in deal closure. An experienced and professional sales rep always revolves around this gravity of engagement tasks most of the times. When a salesperson jumps into support tasks, they burn valuable sales time. It’s the job of the sales support team to source data and profiles. What’s ideal is a common forum where salespeople can discuss the success of data and requirements with sales support staff for better results. That’s the end to it. However, it has been observed many times that when a salesperson starts sourcing data they end up with less selling time.

3) Task Prioritization: Every sales department has a unique sales philosophy, sales process, and deal cycle. These three factors can be improved by the help of a sales rep, but that should be the most one can require from a sales rep. It’s better to work on their own task prioritization. The defined sales process and steps should be followed with discipline.

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