7 Ways to Improve Your Time Management

Have you ever read or watched an interview with an incredibly wealthy person? You know, the one where the person owns an uber-pricey car that can be picked up by a helicopter that then lands on their private yacht? The one question that typically comes up is: "What's the one thing you can't buy?" The answer is always the same:

Time.

It's the same with salespeople, too. No matter how many leads you have, there's only so much time in the day, making what you do with it paramount to your success. Today, we're going over time management, and how to best utilize your time for sales. Let's do it.

1. Be ready to pivot

People are going to cancel appointments... it's inevitable in sales. The key to a missed appointment isn't the appointment itself, but rather what you do with the extra time you've just been given – how are you going to turn this into a positive? One suggestion is to use this time to research your next call. Find out as much as you can about your next lead, which will bring the upcoming call that much closer to a close. Pivoting is simple: be ready to change gears and tackle the next task on your list. No time wasted, no opportunity overlooked.

2. Schedule your day (and stick to it)

Any given day is full of rabbit holes; those tasks that tend to become five more tasks that end with nothing getting done. You can avoid this by scheduling your tasks, blocking your calendar, and adhering to it like a regimen. If you've scheduled the hours of 9am-1pm for sales calls, you shouldn't be doing anything but making calls... seriously. No checking your Facebook, no answering emails – we don't even want you eating a muffin, unless that muffin is somehow capable of making phone calls to your leads. =) This brings us to our next tip...

3. Turn off your notifications

This hack comes to us via our good friend Ben Kinney, and has helped him stay productive throughout the day. Ben noticed that, when he added it up, he was spending hours every day checking Facebook, answering texts, and reading emails on his phone. While incredibly simple, his fix was genius: he turned off all the notifications on his phone. The pop-ups were gone, and the little numbers next to his icons were nowhere to be seen. He was off the grid. Doing this allowed him to focus on the tasks he had set out for himself, and his day was much more productive as a result.

4. Work on ALL tasks (not just the ones you like)

We get it. There are some tasks you absolutely hate. While you should never hate what you do, sometimes you have to do what you hate. There's always that one task, the one you can't stand and always manage to avoid. The problem arises when you spend too much time on one particular task in an effort to avoid another. The work becomes unbalanced, which can affect your sales. These tasks are the ones you should finish first each day. You're going to have to do it anyway, might as well get it over with early!

5. Streamline Repetitive Tasks

The great thing about Happy Grasshopper is we take a huge chunk of a salesperson's day off their plate. We handle an agent's entire email follow-up strategy, which is a time-consuming endeavor. Like our service, you want to find those repeating tasks you do every day and try to find a way to streamline them. Whether it's a service, platform, or workaround you've created yourself, streamlining the easy stuff opens up more time in your day to focus on the hard stuff.

6. Create a buffer time between tasks

Yeah, that's right: we're adding time to your day. Don't worry though, it's important time that will raise your productivity. After each task, make sure to set aside some time (10 or 15 minutes) to wrap up what you were working on or prepare for the next task. If you're unable to finish a task or prepare for the next, you've just added more to your plate that needs to be finished later. This buffer zone will ensure that each task gets the necessary amount of time and attention.

7. Constantly evaluate your day

Now that you have some solid tips for balancing your day, it's time to see what actually works. The fact is, 20% of your day is validating the other 80%, and you need to find out where that 20% lives. Are the bulk of your leads coming from emails and referrals? Well, that's where the majority of your day should be spent: fostering your email leads and referrals. The key to this is to never stop evaluating your business. Revenue streams are always shifting, and what makes you money this week may not be your top producer next month. Constantly taking stock of what works will keep you successful in the long run.

To view the original article, visit the Happy Grasshopper blog.