PERSONAL TIME MANAGEMENT - HOW ARE YOU DOING ?

Are you a good time manager ? It's obviously one of the key issues within a professional salesperson's career. And most of us struggle with it on a daily basis; if not minute by minute. As you well know there are a million resources to educate you and make you aware of some possible directions for improvement; and some of them are very good. I encourage you to periodically visit some form of time management influence and recognize that there may be some things for you to differently that could affect your productivity and thereby your success.

Here's my tip and what I try to do to influence my own issues with time management. ( it's not original with me or is it earth shaking but it works )

DEFINE YOUR PRIORITIES AND FOCUS ON THEM ! Let your priorities drive your direction and focus. What are your priorities ? List all of the things that you do, all of the things you should do, and all of the things that are required for you to do. Once you have compiled that list; then go through the list and put them in order of how essential they are to your success. A simple example would be that your manager requires your sales report on his/her desk by 10 AM Monday. How important is that to you ? To your Manager ? To your continued employment ? I'm assuming it's pretty important and so it better get a pretty high mark on the priority list. That's easy.

What about calls to existing customers, new customers, follow up calls to last week's appointments, and on and on and on ! So, you should have a pretty lengthy list - right. Now out of all of those, which are the most likely to contribute to your future success ? Aye there's the rub ! The ones that are most likely to affect your future success are not necessarily the ones that receive the priority status and attention needed. We all manage our time and most of us don't screw around that much and so we see ourselves as pretty good time managers - we are always busy !

But are we focusing on the items / tasks / challenges that should be the "focus" of our time management. Or are we deferring to other tasks that we enjoy doing more, find less uncomfortable, and give us a better feeling of accomplishment ? That's for you to decide. Unless I am your sales coach and I will assist in pointing out where the "FOCUS" of your time management needs to be discussed and contemplated !

Think about your PRIORITIES and your FOCUS !