How much do you aspire to make next year?  50,000, 100,000, 200,000??

For the sake of an example, let’s use 100,000.  You can adjust the example for your situation.  If you work 2000 hours a year (40 hours per week), you will earn $50 per hour.  Every hour that completes itself contributes the most cherished component of a salesperson’s day – time.

For high activity salespeople, with sales cycles, from initial contact to close, is 90 days or less …
How do you handle interruptions to sales time?  How does your world interrupt your selling time.  How much of your day do you spend either in front of someone or fighting to get in front of someone?  How much of your day is spent idle?  How much of your day do you react to things rather than schedule them?  How much of your day do you spend prospecting or selling in a face-to-face meeting in order to achieve your sales goal?  And, finally … how much of your day is spent maximizing the amount of time you spend face-to-face in front of prospects?

And, for major accounts’ sales teams, with sales cycles of 90 days and up, even 2 years or more …
How much of your time is spent thinking about strategies?  How much of your time involves getting other peoples’ input into next steps?  How much time do you put into writing and rewriting emails, approach letters, responses to questions, powerpoints, etc.?  How much of your time is spent finding ways to get the next important advance accomplished – one that moves the sale another degree in your favor?  In other words, how do you structure your sales time to plan out the next thing to do with the right person(s) at the right time – then do the sales action – and then review your account positioning to plan out the next thing to do, etc. etc. etc.?  Plan – Do – Review, Plan – Do – Review.

For a salesperson, whether high activity or major accounts, time is valuable.  It may be used differently – it’s still valuable.  With 2000 hours in a year, one hundred thousand dollars is earned one hour at a time … $50 dollars an hour.

And, once gone, a salesperson cannot recover time – it’s gone – $50 or more each and every hour – burned up by waste or good intentions or a lack of understanding

.

At $100,000 a year – $50 an hour
At $200,000 a year – $100 an hour

How many sales do you need to make to earn $100,000?  $200,000 … $300,000
Divide the number of sales in a year by 2000 hours in a year and you know the number of hours available for each sale.

For example, a cellular salesperson for some companies must make 1000 sales in a year to earn $100,000.
1000 sales ÷ 2000 hours = 1 sale every 2 hours (lots of face-to-face time in a week)

In some firms, a commercial real estate broker must make 10 sales in a year to earn $200,000 …
10 sales ÷ 2000 hours = 1 sale every 200 hours (200 hours mostly made up of planning and reviewing before doing a prospecting or face-to-face activity)

So, do you value your time at $50 or more per hour?  Do you realize that what you do with time is having a dramatic effect on your family’s security or well being, or your achievement, or your security, or the recognition you receive, or just your ability to do your duty – to achieve a minimum sales amount for your company?

Remember these tips …
– Every meeting does not need to be an hour long.
– Do not automatically say yes to any use of time.
– Every email does not instantaneously need to be responded to or even read.
– The use of the Internet needs to improve your sales during sales time.
– When someone wants to talk with you for “30 sec,” do you just react and by your actions say, “Yes?”
– Schedule more of your day calendar into blocks of productive time.
– Block out time to find new opportunities (lead generation) and time to prospect them on the phone.
– Block out appointment time for face-to-face sales calls.
– Block out time for important strategy sessions (major accounts)
…………….
We often forget about our most valuable sales asset – time.  The activity trap of multiple tasks, sensory lures, and interruptions get us off track.  Let’s stop the cycle or at least begin the process of slowing it down now.  You can do it.  Keep remembering at the end of the day, and the year, what’s important – really important, and change.  Get better.  Lance.

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