Organizing Your Selling Day

You’re in sales and you have a lot to do each day. Want to make more money? Organize your selling day. While many sellers I observe spend their day putting out fires and reacting to whatever siren is clanging the loudest, others do either whatever is easiest or whatever they enjoy the most. The most successful reps, however, plan their day.

I don’t care what type of calendar you use…paper, electronic or any other, you need to use your calendar religiously and make sure that everything, and I mean everything, you need to get done is on your calendar.

Here are some of the most important activities that should be on your calendar for certain. This list is not all inclusive and your particular selling situation may call for other activities but this should give you a good start:

Prospecting time – Schedule in the appropriate amount of prospecting time each day. Any day that you don’t prospect is a day you can’t close a deal somewhere down the line. By prospecting daily (whether a little or a lot is right for you) you consistently give yourself the chance to regularly close business and avoid a good week followed by a bad week, a good month followed by a bad month, etc.

Make sure you know the right amount of activity for you to do each day to hit your goals.

I recommend you prospect first thing in the morning each day. It’s not because that’s necessarily the best time to reach prospects, it’s because if you get it done first you’ve done the most important thing you can do for the day and have made sure it gets accomplished. Consistent prospecting is the best way I know to keep your sales and paycheck up.

Appointments – The next most important thing on your calendar is your appointments. Use smart territory management when setting appointments and try to schedule appointments close together geographically in any given day to maximize your selling time. When you set an appointment on a day, work hard to set more appointments nearby for that day. Travel time can be productive but why spend more time than needed driving around when you can be meeting with more prospects? Be sure to include enough time between appointments so that you’re never late.
Meetings – Sometimes you’ll need to attend meetings with your manager or others. Some of these are regular and can be considered when setting appointments. (e.g. – Weekly sales meeting) Some are more random. Plan around regular meetings and if a non-recurring meeting gets in the way of your selling speak with your manager and discuss whether you really need to attend. If so, and you’ve already set an appointment for that time; ask if it can be switched. More prospective client meetings = more sales. More meetings in the office seldom means more sales. Help to make sure the meetings you do have to attend are fast-moving and productive.
Personal Time – Be sure to set aside some time for necessities like lunch and breaks. You need to eat and you need to take occasional breaks. The human body and brain need a short break (5 – 15 minutes at the most) every 90 – 120 minutes in order to function at peak levels. Build the time for a quick break into your calendar so that the time you do invest working is invested working at peak performance.

Occasionally we all have personal matters to take care of during business hours. Keep these to a minimum. Prime Selling Time (the hours during the week that we can be in front of prospects and customers) should be treated as sacred time.

Account Maintenance – Set aside time for contacting current and previous customers to touch base and let them know you care. Studies show that the #1 reason customers become ex-customers is they don’t believe their sales rep cares about them after the sale is made. There’s gold in your database. I’m willing to bet there are previous customers of yours ready to do business with you right now and all you need to do is make contact. Stay in touch.
Social Media – While this really falls under prospecting, I’m keeping it separate from more “immediate” forms of prospecting. Cold calling or door knocking can get you appointments immediately, social media takes time. Invest a small amount of time each day using tools like LinkedIn (my favorite!) and Twitter. (15 – 20 minutes should be more than enough)
Get Help – Have a specific time each day to check in with your manager so that you can let her know what help you need, what’s holding you back and what you’re working on so that you can get another opinion on how to move sales forward quickly. If your manager can’t speak with you once a day this should be done once a week minimum.

Planning – Each day the last thing you should do is make sure the next day is already planned so that you can start the day by hitting the ground running. Showing up at your desk at 8:59, booting up your computer and eating your breakfast while perusing your favorite websites is not productive. Start early and have your prospecting list ready so that you can make whatever calls you need to make and hit the road by 9:00. Better yet, do your prospecting from home at 7:00 a.m. (most of the time you’re leaving a voice mail anyway so it doesn’t matter when you call) (Be sure to leave a voice mail that gets people to call you back) Set your first client facing meeting for 8:00 (bring them coffee and donuts!) to get a jump on your day.

Your particular type of selling might mean you need to do different activities than those listed above. Whatever you need to do each day, get organized so that you have the best chance to achieve the most with the hours you have available. Be flexible enough to make changes on the fly, when needed, while being focused enough to accomplish each day’s goals. Starting out with a full calendar, as well as a list of the 6 most important things you need to accomplish that day, is a recipe for greater sales success.