Below is a coaching session for a manager looking to better manage her time – By: Rory Vaden
Congratulations on taking the first huge step of outsourcing your email and voicemail to get help with prioritization. Thank you for following through with that and it lights me up to know that your peace of mind and productivity is already improving as the result of your execution.
We have no greater respect than for producing sales managers. It’s a rare person that has the skill to be a producer and lead a team and manage the helter skelter. You are one of those unique people. Your focus for the next two weeks is to outsource your calendar. Put an assistant in charge of scheduling all appointments. Of course there will be unavoidable fires, but this will help tremendously.
Remember the concepts we talked about:
- Rocks, pebbles, sand, water- Put the big things in place first. Schedule groups of time around certain types of activities. IE Prospecting time, recruiting time, email/phone time, Team training time, customer service time, paperwork time, etc. Block those times out of every day and give them to your calendar manager so they know what times of the day to schedule what types of activities. Blocks of time for grouping similar activities.
- “Batching” – Remember the magnifying glass. FOCUSed energy is more powerful. Group similar activities together. IE Try putting your personal conference calls altogether on 1 day rather than spread out. Contrary to popular belief it’s actually energizing to go back to back with 1 type of meeting. It allows you to be more “present” with each person knowing that you’ve dedicated the whole day to it rather than trying to squeeze an hour in with them in the middle of the other ruckus.
- “Systematize” – Create systems for quick meeting preparation. Have your assistant pull the reports for all of your personal conferences the night before and put them on 1 spreadsheet with different tabs. Record basic things about each meeting for each person (topic, action item, next time talk about, goals, etc.). This allows you to prepare quickly and roll 1 meeting to the next.
- “Be Protective” – As a sales manager you are busy; most of the rest of the world is pretty much not. Remember we like to do business with other successful people and people are generally pretty flexible. Let people know “My assistant handles the calendar” (which by the way will be very true in a short period of time you won’t be able to function without her) and have enough time blocks for the types of activities that people can fit into for the week. Don’t schedule meetings during the time you set aside to check email. And don’t email during the time you’ve set aside to prospect or interview.
- “Be Prepared” – Have objectives for each conference call, each prospecting goal period, each personal meeting, etc. You’ll find that effective 1 on 1s might not take an hour. In fact they are often more effective if you do them in 30-45 minutes because the take away is often clearer in a shorter time frame. You will use whatever time you schedule for whatever the activity is so make sure it’s the appropriate amount and not too much. Better to error on the side of not allowing enough time for the meeting and scheduling meetings back to back at first.
Your action item is to take inventory the next 2 weeks. Take inventory of which team members and customers really need to spend the most time with you. (Sometimes you have to fire team members or customers who are taking too much time and not giving enough in return). Also take inventory of what types of activities make sense to do at what times of day.
Next time we talk we’ll physically block out the slots on an excel sheet of what your week should look like.
After that we’ll talk through your interviewing methods, talk about reducing turnover, go through effective training ideas on building a great team, create a long term life vision, and highlight all the different methods of recruiting.
