Employ a Technique to Prevent Becoming Inundated with Useless Information

On first glance, this looks like a bit unrelated to the routine challenges of an successful sales person. What has this to do with your interactions with your customers?

First, consider the issue of “sales time”.  Sales time is the time that you actually spend interacting with your clients either on the phone or in person. It is the heart of your job and the reason your company employs you. Investing your sales time effectively is the way that you attain better results and earn your money.

Due to the demands for administration, reporting, preparing, travel, etc., the typical field sales person only spends about 25 percent of his/her work week in sales time. In our challenging economy, the demands on our time by the press of  “other stuff” can be crushing.

We need to be constantly battling the allure of “other stuff” so that we are investing satisfactorily in selling time. All things being equal, the more time you actually spend with your customers, the more successful you will be.

What  exactly constitutes the biggest proportion of other stuff? What has the potential to overwhelm us, to rob us of our sales time by tempting us to invest our energies in something not nearly as effective?  The answer is information. We are swamped with information. Consider the amount of selling literature, technical bulletins, computer reports, web pages, emails, voice mails, and memos from the boss that we have to deal with every day. All these are types of information. If we gave in to the temptation of dealing with all the information that comes our way, we could easily spend 8 to 15 hours a week doing nothing but that.  And that would not be a good idea. It would detract from our ability to create sales time, and have a negative impact on our performance.

That leads us to this best practice. The best performers don’t waste a lot of time dealing with useless information. They stay focused on the heart of the job “sales time” understanding that without quality time with their customers nothing else matters.

So, they take control and create disciplines and strategies that enable them to deal with all the forms of information quickly and expediently

Dave is a high-energy, high-content speaker, focused on sales training and B2B sales, with a special gift for engaging his audiences and stimulating people to think. A world-class speaker, he has presented throughout the United States and seven countries, bringing a wealth of practical information to his clients.  He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toledo, and a Master’s degree from Bowling Green State University.