5 Easy Techniques to Improve Your Selling Time Management

Without a doubt, being in control of your selling time management is the most important part of becoming a successful salesperson. Check out these 5 easy techniques that will help you focus 100% of your time on closing deals.

One of the biggest barriers for most salespeople is selling time management.

Why? Because the most scarce resource for any salesperson is their time. Thus, how we approach our selling time management on a day-to-day basis is the number one predictor of our sales success.

It’s simple: Selling time management is the most important piece to the puzzle of being successful in sales. We must be masters of our own time.

In this video, I’m going to show you five easy techniques to improve your selling time management. Check it out:

Selling Time Management Video Summary:

Selling Time Management Tip #1: Start saying “no” all the time.

Salespeople often think about what they should be doing with their time, but what if we flip that around and ask, “What shouldn’t you be doing with your time?” As salespeople, we constantly feel pressure from different sources to say “yes” to different asks, but in reality most of these situations are just time-wasters.

Moving forward, get really good at telling people “no” so you can master your selling time management. You can say “no” in a nice way, by the way, but be sure that you say “no” often to requests that aren’t making you money. That’s the key question to ask yourself: “Is saying “yes” to this request going to make me more money?” If not, then say “no.”

Selling Time Management Tip #2: Disqualify tire-kickers.

We’ve all been taught that we need to persuade prospects to do business with us, to convince them that what we sell will have a positive impact on their lives or their business. But this is just old-school crap. What we need to do at the beginning of the sales process is disqualify people who aren’t going to buy from us.

You know what? At least 50% of initial prospects are never going to do business with you. Get comfortable with that. Own that number. By removing those people off your plate right away, you’re going to be more efficient with your selling time management and save yourself a lot of headache with those-tire kickers.

Selling Time Management Tip #3: Go after bigger opportunities.

The number one difference between top salespeople and the vast majority of folks in the middle is not the number of sales that they actually close. In fact, the number of sales that top performers close is usually pretty similar to the number of sales middle performers close. The big difference is the size of those sales. Top performers close bigger deals, and as a result they can make 5 and even 10 times greater commission. It’s time to stop going after those little sales and instead focus on those big opportunities to get your selling time management under control.

Selling Time Management Tip #4: Outsource all operations.

Stop doing operations. I will repeat that: Stop doing operations. Top salespeople that I work with make anywhere from $200,000 to over $1 million dollars a year, and the best operations people I’ve ever met are only making about $180,000 to $200,000 a year at the most successful companies. There’s a reason for that: Top salespeople are gold.

They’re the rainmakers. Operations people are everywhere. You should not be doing operations in your position. You want to spend 100% of your time focused on selling and generating revenue. If you’re not, then rethink your position. Off-load all of your operational responsibility on someone else so that way you can focus your selling time management on the most important thing: selling.

Selling Time Management Tip #5: Clarify your top 3 objectives.

One of my mentors used to always say that we all have 50 things that we need to do today. Every single one of us. The question is: Are you going to do objectives 1 through 3 or 4 through 50? Most salespeople don’t prioritize their most critical objectives, so they end up spending the majority of their days focused on those less important objectives.

Top salespeople know that objectives 1 through 3 are what they need to focus on exclusively, because that’s what makes them money. That means outsourcing objectives 4 through 50 and putting them on someone else. Focus on your top three objectives and nothing else. Let me remind you: Objectives 1 through 3 are going to be directly connected to generating revenue, so focusing on these objectives makes for the best selling time management.

So there you have it. Now you know 5 easy techniques to improve your selling time management. I want to hear from you. Which of these ideas did you find most useful? Be sure to share below in the comments section to get involved in the conversation.