I am a huge believer that one of the main contributing factors to your success in sales is your ability to manage your time, energy and focus. This does not come easy to most people as we humans are inherently hard wired to seek out the path of least resistance, or the easy way!  Time management for salespeople is an increasingly pressing challenge for many organisations due to the pressures of living in an information overload society that can very quickly becoming overwhelming.

As part of our time management for salespeople training we are always on the look out for technology and applications that can save a salesperson  time, energy and resources and ultimately help you become more efficient.

One of our top picks of products and services available to propel you to hyper activity today are:

The Action Machine – Activity Tracking Software for time management for sales people

One of the things we show salespeople on our time management for salespeople courses is the importance of focused activity on one particular activity at a time. All of the modern research demonstrates that multi tasking is actually detrimental to your ability to achieve high productivity status. We train sales people how to use focused time blocks to enable them to increase their productivity by as much as two times. One of the old fashioned  tools we recommended to manage this was a good old fashioned egg timer. The reason why this works is that setting time blocks creates a sense of urgency and keeps you on track for the day. I have just come across a nifty little application that sits on your desktop that allows you manage focused timeblocks with an activity tracker. Its called time management for salespeople software.

It keeps a standard list of activities that you can use down the left hand side, which you can add to as necessary. As you go through your day you choose your activities and set the required time allocation from 5 minutes upwards.  This starts the countdown clock that tracks your time on each activity. Once your time is up you are notified by an audible and visual alert. What is great about it is you can get a great feeling of achievement from looking at those big green ticks on your screen at the end of the day!

I strongly recommend this software which is available for the low, low price of $49 from: time management for salespeople software – it also comes with some great flow chart and process chart style aids. Highly recommended. What could you earn in sales if you could reclaim just 5 more hours per week by increased focus and action!

This is going to be the first of a series of blog posts on time management for sales people and specifically how to use  software and technology accelerate your efficiency. Let me know you are alive by commenting what you think about this blog post – good or bad!

Do you sometimes struggle to remember to follow up with important prospects and existing customers and clients because you just get too over whelmed?

It’s natural. We all do it no matter how well planned out our time is.

The reality is we all let sales and marketing activities go through the cracks because we are too busy, get distracted or just plain forget. There was research done (artributed to many organisations) in the 90′s,  that showed  most people will buy after 7 ‘touches’. More recent research has indicated that with the proliferation of marketing messages and marketing channels available today, that could be more like 12-20 touches.

An effective way to keep ahead of the pack and on top of your game is to leverage technology to work smarter and not harder. One of the best ways of doing this is by using what is referred to as ‘drip marketing’ software.

Using a drip marketing software like pinpoint tools will give you the edge to systemise your sales and marketing with your potential clients and customers.

An overview of Pinpoint Drip Marketing Software:

Manage your drip marketing here

You can develop as many presaved marketing and sales plans as you require. They can incorporate any number of future activities such as telephone calls, emails, letters or project tasks.

One of the most creative ways of utilising this software is to leverage the future dates option. This allows you to choose a future date when an activity will happen. This can be a final decision on a project, a visit to a client premises, a seminar – well, there are no limits.

Once you set that future date, you work backwards from that date to plan a series of activities that will be automatically scheduled at the click of  a button.

If you struggle to keep on top  of your sales and marketing activities then definately check out what this software can do for you. Have a look at pinpoints site – Here If you are going to buy the software, which is great value at $149 use the following code PO477 for a 20% discount.

Let me know how you get on.

My view on time management, activity planning and delegation took  a dramatic upheaval when I went through an exercise I found in a book by Dan Kennedy called “Time Management for Entrepreneurs”. I guarantee that your view of your own personal worth will never be the same again either!

Are you productive all of the time?

I guarantee that you are not. At best you are actively productive one third of your working day. That is engaged in activities that are going to make you money as opposed to firefighting. If you think you are productive 1/3 of the time then use that number in the example to follow. Be honest as you are only cheating yourself if you don’t. The rest of the formula works on the basis that there are on average 220 working days per annum and this is our ‘money making days. If yours is less than this because of extended vacation or lifestyle aspirations then again be honest with yourself and reduce this number.

An example of the formula is:

Target Earnings Example For Someone wanting To Earn £50,000

Your Example:

If your situation doesn’t lend itself to this way of calculation then make it work! For example take the total profitability of your business directly attributable to you and use that figure.

Hey, it might not be precise, but it’s a starting point that you can use to quickly evaluate what you are doing with your time.