9/22/2023-Time Management

The best way to feel good about where you spend your time is to have something to show for it. Get into the habit of setting goals, and then you can tie your time spent to those initiatives.

Q3 is done in a week and you’re getting the hint that only morsels are left in Q4. (Yet, it’s still too early to mutter the cliche line, "Where did the year go?")

Maximizing time during the last quarter of the year is no different than how you manage time during other quarters.

Remember these three principles for time management:
1. Understand where you spend your time.
2. Build a disciplined scheduling system.
3. Set and manage goals.

Now, in late September, it’s a good time to think of what the next 90+ days look like…not just to maximize Q4 but to set up for ’24.

Assess how much time you spent this past week against these core selling activities:
+ Prospecting & networking
+ Pitch meetings in front of prospects and clients
+ Proposal creation/presentation
+ Strategy sessions to prepare for customer meetings

If more of your time in the last week was spent on internal meetings, administrative work, and I don’t know where my time went stuff, then you need to flip the script and focus on doing more of the aforementioned essentials next week.

Time is a sneaky bastard, ain’t it? It runs too fast when you need it to go slow, and vice versa.

The only way to feel good about where you spend your time is to have something to show for it. The backbone of this principle is based on the core elements of strong time management skills:
1. Understand where you spend your time.
2. Build a disciplined scheduling system.
3. Set and manage goals.

There’s nothing more tangible for a salesperson than goals. But where most sellers get confused about setting goals – and thus, dismayed about time – is thinking all goals must be hairy and audacious.

They don’t.

Goals can be small, too, but they must be meaningful.

Further, don’t confuse goals with tasks. Tasks are what you do to reach your goals.

If you haven’t yet set goals for Q4, it’s not too late. How about this one, "Exceed my Q4 quota by 20% by growing my top two accounts?". That’s a specific goal, and it’s assertive too. Now, you’re cooking with gas because you can correlate your time spent with your goals.

Pssst…come close and listen to a secret about wasting time at work…

Even your manager wastes time at work. (Uh-huh!)

The reason you’re studying time management is not so you can reach a level of perfection; it’s to help focus you on spending a few extra minutes a day on the things you want and need to do. (The stuff you need to do to be in the TOP 10%.)

Perhaps a 3-minute laugh from The Office featuring Jim and Dwight will ease your mind a bit about how you spend your time.