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Now that we’ve discussed the three methods for increasing your productivity, we’re going to address each area more closely and make suggestions to easily and quickly improving in each area!
1) Increasing Your Demos
We all share the same limiting factor: TIME! So we can’t add anymore time (once you cap yourself out each week), so we have to find better ways to make our time more productivity. So let’s look at 10 ways to increase our demos each week:
1) Commit to a MINIMUM STANDARD NO MATTER WHAT
You MUST set your minimum standard for each week that YOU will hit NO MATTER WHAT. If you currently hit 2 demos per week, go for 4! You’ll DOUBLE your sales!
2) Commit to working a FULL day EVERY DAY!
Many sales people waste 2 to 3 hours per day by going into NSA mode by 2 or 3pm. And Fridays are usually the most unproductive day of the week for most sales people. I’m not suggesting you kill yourself, but in order to accomplish #1 above, commit to starting each day at a pre-planned time, and DON’T stop until you reach your demo goal (we’ve included demo sheets to help you track this! Then, as a reward, IF you hit your demo goal for the week early, you can make the decision to reward yourself by either quitting early on Friday, or keep going!
3) Set your appointments in clusters
One of the biggest time-sucks on sales people is drive-time! Do you make the mistake of driving to one extreme of your territory to then end-up driving to the opposite end of your area? Take a hint: set your appointments within 15 or 20 minutes of each other. And if you set an appointment at the last minute, don’t be afraid to call a prospect back to change the appointment to fit YOUR needs! STAY in control of your schedule!
4) Don’t spend TOO much time with a prospect or client
Once you landed the big sale, DON’T make the mistake of feeling obligated to “hanging around” with a client! You can lose 30 minutes during each presentation by making this mistake. And if you do 4 presentations per week, that translates to 2 hours of time! We have a great trick or tool for helping you not waste time after the presentation. Try this: wear a watch with a timer. When you begin your presentation, set your watch to 20 or 30 minutes. Then tell your Prospect that you are VERY serious about not taking too much of his time and that the watch will go off in 20 minutes. (This goes along way for taking pressure off your prospect!) Then, at 20 minutes, guess what! Your watch goes off and it helps you move into “closing mode!” In fact, when my watch goes off, I’ve actually had prospects close themselves at that point! They’ll say things like: “Wow, I guess we’re running out of time- what do I need to do to move forward with this?”!!! And if you feel you need more time with your prospect, you can always reset the watch for another 20 minutes!
5) Don’t waste time Cold-calling!
Yep, you heard me right. DON’T WASTE TIME COLD-CALLING! In fact, this is probably the biggest time-suck on any sales person! Unless you’ve been in your industry for years and have a TON of repeat business, you probably spend a huge amount of time cold-prospecting! You don’t need to do this (more on this later)!
6) Stop wasting time doing “follow-ups”
We’re going to show you how to stop making 80 million follow-up calls per week! We went over the sales cycle in the Beginning Course, and in this Course, we’ll discuss how to “recycle” your presentation and how to “train” your Prospect to actually call YOU back versus you spending tons of wasted time playing the ‘cat and mouse’ game!
7) Company Meeting Time
How much time are spending in meetings each week? I know this can be a difficult one to get out of, but if you’re finding yourself spending 2 or 3 or 4+ hours each week meeting with managers, associates, etc, HAVE A TALK with your supervisor. Explain to him or her that you feel you would be MUCH more productive spending your time selling! Ask if you could “conference call” in to the really important meetings and “skip all together” the non essentials!
If you work for a company that consumes tons of your time with stupid, unproductive meetings and you don’t have any luck convincing your manager on decreasing this wasted time, consider moving on to a different company! We know of some companies that literally make their sales team drive all the way to the office each day to start (then they have to drive back out to their territory,) and then they’re mandated to return to the office each night! What a HUGE waste of time. They’re probably wasting at least two hours + of each salesperson’s daily time!
8) Paper Work
How much of your time each week is spent doing paperwork? You might actually be surprised!
GET RID OF IT! Doing paper work is an $8 an hour job. I bet you could afford to pay someone yourself to do the really mindless stuff if it meant you could do 3 or 4 more demos per week! Just think about it. It might make sense for you to appeal to a manager to get some help in this area or just make the decision and pay someone to help you!
9) Customer Service
Many companies cloud their description of a “sales position” and end up making the sales person do almost EVERY function from Marketing to Fulfillment! For example, I have a family member who sells industrial equipment. He used to work for a company where once he got the sale, he also had to prepare the bid, and then actually do a bunch of the engineering! So when he really looked at it, only about 10 to 15 per cent of his week was spent selling. The rest of the time he spent doing customer service. But oddly, he got paid for the sale, (I don’t think he get compensated anything for the other stuff!) My family member since switched to a company that allows him to stay focused on what he’s good at and what he enjoys: selling!
We recently started a specialized customer service division for our company. This new department’s responsibility is to take as much of the NSA off the sales people’s shoulders as possible! And it’s working! We’ve notice a 20% increase already!
10) Time Bandits
Time Bandits is a miscellaneous category that we group all the “little time-wasters into!” As the saying goes, small holes can sink a ship, so it goes with Time Bandits. You can create your own list of Time Bandits, but here are a few:
Screwing up your schedule (showing up for an
appointment on the wrong day or at the wrong time)
Spending time trying to find a file (being unorganized)
Fumbling with trying to figure out WHOM to call on
Surfing the INTERNET (especially live chats)
Spending time looking for a pencil or pen
Stopping at the coffee shop twenty times
Getting calls from friends and relatives
Chatting with associates
Lonely Sales Managers
Listening to the Radio
Playing video games
LONG lunches
“Vegging Out”
Oversleeping
Happy Hour
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