Sales Tips From One of the the Top Sports Training and Consulting Companies- 
Altitude Premium Consulting

BennettTIPS
Weekly Sales Training Tips From Greg Bennett of Altitude Premium Consulting  
a Kroenke Sports Enterprises 
Partner Organization 

Time Maximization in Sales

Segment 1: Addressing the Time Stealers

Segment 2: Planning Your Daily  Time Blocks

Segment 3: Managing Your Account Lists

Segment 4: Tools and Tips to Make Time Maximization Permanent

Past Training Tips

Non-Verbal Communication

Negotiation Strategies That Win

Merged Selling

The Art of Renewing a Client 

Time Maximization in Sales

Time Maximization In Sales

Getting The Most Out of Each Moment

-By Greg Bennett

Welcome to this four-part series I'm doing on Time Maximization in Sales -- Getting the Most Out of Each Moment.   This is an interesting topic for me because Time Management is a little like that saying about the weather, "Everyone complains about the weather...but no one does anything."    Everyone wants to be better time managers, everyone wants to learn how to be more efficient and effective with their daily activities....but no one does anything! 

Over the hundred plus years I've been training people (okay, not quite that long) there has been one topic that people ask me about over and over and over again...Time Management.  "Greg, what can you tell us about Time Management?"  "Greg, any tips on how to better plan your day?"  "Greg, I don't think my problem is Call Reluctance, I think it's a Time thing, can you help me with that?" 

My answer is usually "Yes, I can share with you lots of ideas and strategies about Time Management...but the problem is most people won't do anything about it!"

While that seems like a negative and abrupt answer, especially coming from a "Sales Trainer" who is supposed to give much more Tony Robins-like answers like, "Yes, if you will just unleash your inner turbo-power you would see that you can control not only time, but you have the power to control the world (and yes, the weather!)"

But for those that know me, they know that I am a living example of the "Stockdale Principle" -- which is described in Jim Collins' book, "Good to Great" as -- being positive about the future outcome, but painfully honest about your current situation -- I know that people want to become better time managers, but I also know that this goes much deeper than a bunch of quick tips and strategies that are quickly learned then discarded.

To change how we maximize our day we must start with the question -- do we REALLY want to get better at maximizing our time?  YES GREG WE DO!  Really?  Well are you willing to make painful changes to do it?  UH, YES...WELL, DEPENDS ON WHAT THEY ARE.  

This is sort of like asking - Do you REALLY want to lose weight? YES GREG WE DO. Are you willing to make painful changes to do it?  UH, YES...WELL, DEPENDS ON WHAT CHANGES YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

Now you can start to see why I'm a realist about this Time Management stuff.  Lots of people like going to classes and workshops, and reading books about the concepts of time management, but they aren't willing to make the changes required to do something about it.

Well maybe we can break this trend by giving you some tangible strategies you can employ to not only "manage" your time, but to really "maximize" every moment. Again...these are only strategies, the question still comes down to the decisions you make every moment of every day.

Here are the four segments on this topic:

I:   Addressing the Time "Stealers"
II:  Planning Your Daily Blocks
III  Managing Your Client List
IV: Tools and Tips to Make This Permanent

I:  Addressing the Time Stealers

Here are some of the common time thieves we all experience.  One of the first steps towards a positive change is to boldly face our negatives -- those obstacles that steal our time on a daily basis.

• EMail -- I believe that email is one of the most amazing inventions to ever come down the pike...it's dramatically changed our lives and made business communication much more efficient and effective.  It's also proving to be one of the greatest time-wasters for salespeople. Instead of prospecting,  we check our email.  Instead of making calls, we check out email.

  • Turn off the email during sales times...

  • Manage your emails into Mail Boxes...

  • Clean our InBox every night...

   

• Voice Mail -- Don't we all just dread coming back from a day out of the office selling, or doing service work, and we come back to dozens of voice mails?    We then have to answer the voice mails and end up leaving more voice mails.  I hate it!!

  • Get a Blackberry...it will cut down on your voice mail by about 90%
     

• Bad Appointments -- When we don't qualify our appointments we end up running appointments that aren't productive...with low level decision makers, and clients who don't know what is expected of them in the call

  • Make sure you run appointments with people who can make decisions...

  • Clarify what you expect to happen in the call...
     

• Over-servicing -- Many salespeople make the mistake of over-servicing  clients when it's really not necessary.  Now I'm not saying we should stop providing good customer service, but we can certainly pick and choose what is absolutely necessary to build a relationship with the client.

  • Seek to understand the client's expectations for what is service...

  • Share with the clients how you intend to service the account...

  • Think before you act..."Do I really need to stop everything I'm doing and run this over to the client?"  "Can someone else do it?"  "Can it wait until it fits into my schedule?"
     

•  Visiting vs Closing (or Advancing the Sale) -- Salespeople are guilty of doing too much "visiting" with clients, with questions like "So how is everything going?"  "How is our proposal looking?"  "What are your thoughts?" These generic, surface questions will get you generic, surface answers like,   "Pretty good..."  "Still looking at it..."  "We'll keep you informed".  Nice conversation, but it doesn't advance the sale.

  • Instead of visiting questions, get in the habit of asking clients to take action, even on small steps (our Mini-Steps)...
     

• Creating Needless Proposals -- We make a major mistake in developing proposals for just about any prospect we stumble upon.  Just because a prospect says they want a proposal, doesn't mean we need to invest the time and energy to create one.  Or just because we get stuck in a sales call and don't know what to do, doesn't mean we should offer to create a proposal to avoid a tense situation.

  • Develop some criteria for prospects before you invest the time to create a proposal

    • Are they the right size?

    • Do they have needs we can impact?

    • Has the prospect agreed to a "conditional agreement" where the prospect says they'd buy under the right circumstances?

• Lack of Planning Beyond Set Client Meetings -- The old saying "If you're not following your plan you'll be a part of everyone else's" is very true.  If the only thing you schedule is meetings with prospects and clients, we aren't scheduling time to take care of other major tasks.

  • Block out your day, including prospecting, return calls, research, proposal writing, etc.

These are just a few of the time stealers that are out there...there are many more we need to address and deal with before we can make major improvement.

In our next segment we'll cover how to break our days into blocks of time and how to schedule those blocks and treat them with respect.

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Greg Bennett, a partner in the innovative brand expansion and consulting organization, Altitude Premium Consulting,  LLC, has been one of the top sales and sales management trainers in professional sports and entertainment since 1988.  He has created and delivered training programs for over 80+ professional sports teams and leagues, along with several Fortune 500 companies.   Altitude Premium Consulting provides training as well as the creation of premium-branded goods for pro sports teams, entertainment companies and corporate sponsors, and is in a partnership relationship with Kroenke Sports Enterprises, owners of the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Pepsi Center, the Colorado Mammoth and several other sports and entertainment entities throughout the United States.  Bennett can be reached at (303) 405-6110, or you can email Greg directly at gbennett@pepsicenter.com .