No matter how good a product is, nobody will buy it if they have not heard about it. On top of that, sometimes it takes a skilled and informed presentation of a product for people to realize how much value it can bring to them. That is the job of the more than 13 million people who are employed in sales just in the United States!
Of course, the world of sales comes with its own challenges. One of the most common challenges that sales leaders work with is time management. Learning to manage this one area can greatly increase success and productivity.
But there is a reason that time management is one of the most common sales leaders' challenges. It can be difficult to figure out how to make it work for you. Read on to learn all about the time management techniques that can help you tackle this sales challenge!
Prioritize to Manage Sales Challenges
If it feels like you are extremely busy and yet nothing is ever getting done, the problem might be a lack of prioritization.
There is always an endless quantity of tasks to do. The trick is not to focus on getting the highest number of tasks completed, but to get the most important tasks completed instead.
It is important to have as clear a picture as possible of which of your tests are the most important. Every week or so, you should take the time to re-examine your list of tasks and order them according to importance.
If you spend all of your time on your important work, then you may not get everything done. However, you will get everything important done, and that will lead you to more success than getting a random assortment of tasks of varying importance done.
Eventually, it will also be important for you to learn what tasks to accept and which to reject. Over time, you will develop the taste to know which tasks are simply not worth doing relative to everything else. The important thing to keep track of is that it's not whether not a given task provides any value at all, but whether or not it provides more value than the other tasks already on your to-do list.
Boundaries Are Crucial for Sales Team Time Management Strategies
The challenges of time management for team leaders often have a lot to do with the salespeople that they are responsible for. It is important to set boundaries in order to make sure that your time does not get spent on random interactions with people who come to you throughout the day.
At the same time, it can feel awkward and difficult to set unexpected boundaries on the spot. That is why it is important to set boundaries in advance.
As long as everybody knows in advance what the rules are, you will feel much more at ease in forcing the rules.
At the same time, if you do not enforce boundaries consistently, then people will start to feel that you are only enforcing boundaries when you don't want to deal with something
If that happens, then it will again begin to feel difficult to enforce boundaries when you need to. That is why it is important to not only set explicit boundaries but also to enforce them consistently.
Separate Your Sales Leaders Workload Into Chunks
One of the greatest breakthroughs in productivity came with the advent of the division of labor. People realize that there is a certain amount of time wasted when you move from one task to another.
That is why it is much more efficient to do all of the same kind of work at the same time. Only when it is all finished do you move on to a different kind of task and then you do all the work associated with that kind of task all at the same time.
Use the Power of Planning
10 minutes of planning each day can save you hours of productivity. It is important to notice which of your tasks are dependent on others so you know in what order to do them.
It is also important to track when you simply do not have time to do everything and need to make last-minute adjustments to your prioritization.
Avoid Every Distraction Possible
If distraction simply did not exist, it would be far easier to get all of your intended work done. Although distractions do exist, you can still approximate an environment where they do not. In every way possible, seek to eliminate distractions.
There are a variety of apps you can use to block time-wasting sites. You can also set up rules for yourself. One of the most important rules for a lot of people is limiting their access to their inbox to certain times of the day.
Don’t Let Meetings Tank Your Productivity
In theory, all the time that you spend in a meeting is automatically productive. That can make meetings a tempting way to waste time. You can always tell yourself that the time was not wasted because you were busy in a meeting.
The truth is that a meeting is often a waste of time. The more people are in a meeting, the higher the chances that one of them could be doing something else more productive.
Keep your meeting small and short. It might surprise you how much you can get done in 10 minutes if you do not give yourself any longer in a meeting.
Be Prepared to Tackle Top Sales Leaders’ Challenges
We hope that you were able to take away something useful from this brief article on one of the biggest sales leaders' challenges and what you can do about it. Although it can take study and practice to manage these sales challenges, learning to do so is an investment that will pay off in success for months and years to come!
