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As you heralded the beginning of 2026 at the stroke of midnight, you probably made a resolution to make 2026 a great year. And part of that resolution might have been to increase your income and to hit your revenue goals each month. Doing the second will make the first possible.
We talk about "billable hours". How we spend our time Monday through Friday 8AM-5PM will determine our paychecks. Time is money, literally.
Great success in sales means learning and following a system. Sales requires a process. It requires self-management. Every day, we need to put new people into our pipeline. We call this "prospecting." We need to get appointments with those prospects to do a customer needs analysis where we learn about our clients' worlds and how we can help them. We need to present solutions designed to meet the needs we uncovered in Phase Two. And after they say, "Yes", we need to smother them with attention, following their changing needs and reselling them on doing business with us. We should allocate time DAILY to do some of the four steps in the process.
These steps should form the basis of our daily schedules. If every day of your selling career you made enough new contacts to schedule two client needs analysis meetings and one presentation for annual dollars, how successful would you be? What if you had three client needs analysis meetings scheduled and two presentations for annual dollars?
We also need to schedule time to do the paperwork involved in our business: writing proposals, writing orders, writing copy, following up with clients. These are important parts of our jobs but should not be allowed to interfere with face-to-face client contact between the hours of 9AM and 4PM. Save early and late to work at your desk. With today's technology the ability to return phone calls and answer emails is as close as our phone or tablet.
The most successful salespeople I have worked with also do one other important thing: they set aside a few hours each week to PLAN. These planning sessions are done outside of normal work hours. Choose a time that works for you, a time you can be uninterrupted for a couple of hours to think strategically.
- What short term, intermediate and long-term items do you need to work on? What time will you set aside to do so?
- Which projects will give you the highest return on time invested? When will you schedule them?
- Which projects are the most important to your boss? Do them now!
- Were there items on last week's action list that you did not get done and need to move to this week? Place them on your daily calendar.
- Are there other things I have not considered that will give me long-term, significant results? Think about the next quarter, upcoming seasons, new categories of business.
The best time management experts in the world can only give you techniques to make better use of your billable hours. It's up to you to adopt these techniques and turn them into habits. As we say here in Oklahoma, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." The pond is here. I hope you'll take a big, long guzzle. I promise you that better use of your time will mean higher revenues for you.
Happy Selling!
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