How to improve your time management as a salesperson

Philippe Pavillet

Feb 8, 2023

Daily sales activities usually include finding new prospects, making calls, sending emails, attending team meetings, talking to prospects, scheduling tasks, updating the CRM, etc. Because of the large workload, time management and planning play an important role in the life of a salesperson. However, only 18% of people use a time management system, which indicates that the large majority of people are not operating at their full potential. 

According to statistics, the average employee spends 51% of every workday on low to no-value tasks: unnecessary commuting (13%), unnecessary meetings (16%), and unnecessary emails (23%). Poor time management leads to missing deadlines, lower productivity, increased costs, and poor customer relationships, which creates a more stressful work environment. In fact, 45 minutes per day or 4.3 hours per week is wasted on average due to unorganized workspaces! (Source: Zippia)

Thus, good time management is needed in order to prioritize tasks properly and be efficient. In this article, we will give you hints on how to improve productivity by organizing your time as a salesperson. 

There are 4 main levers you need to use to start managing your time effectively: 

PRIORITIZE TASKS

  • List your tasks: List all the tasks you need to accomplish and make a distinction between what is urgent and what is important, keeping in mind the deadlines. Remember that the center of the time management strategy must always be the customer! 

  • Segment your customers: As we explained in the last blog article The best way to prioritize your customers, segmenting customers helps you to classify them as urgent or non-urgent, thus avoiding wasting time on unnecessary follow-ups. 

PLAN YOUR DAY

  • Schedule day-to-day tasks: Start each day with a plan on what you need to do and allocate specific time for each task. This will help you have an organized routine and be productive at work. Besides, studies show that spending 10-12 minutes planning your day can save you 2 hours of time!

  • Set SMART objectives:_ Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based_. These objectives will help you not only define the daily tasks you need to complete but also know how to differentiate between urgent and important tasks. Remember that your day-to-day work must collaborate in the fulfillment of the objectives set!

  • Avoid multitasking: Really important! In order to improve your time management, the optimal way is to focus on one task at a time, with full attention on each activity before moving on to the next. 

AVOID THE UNNECESSARY 

  • Identify where you are losing time: There are always activities that take up a large part of your time. Is it in unnecessary internal meetings? sending useless emails? or trying to understand a feature in the CRM? 

USE TECHNOLOGY

  • Productivity tools: using tools such as calendars, task management software, and time-tracking apps will help you keep track of your tasks and deadlines, improving productivity.

  • Automation: Your CRM will help you reduce time on administrative tasks; but if you complement the software with other apps that offer functionalities like customer analytics and marketing automation, you will be able to save time on useless follow-ups and automate personalized campaigns (learn more on Everything you need to know when choosing your CRM)!

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