How to Build an Effective Selling Week

The next time you finish an efficient and effective week of sales, take a minute to think about why it happened. My guess is it was not an accident. You didn’t suddenly become uber-productive, kill the procrastination bug, and become a time management savant.

My second guess is that it was an anomaly, and you will probably go right back to the usual chaotic “manage the crisis dujour” plan followed by most salespeople … MOST salespeople.

The best of the best do not have such problems. They plan. They prepare. They think ahead. Week after week, they are much more likely to have consistency in the way they manage their selling time. In short, they work hard to make it look easy.

I am a time management nerd. It fascinates me that the people who sell the most work the least. Having worked with thousands of salespeople, I’ve come to observe a pattern. No, effective time management and consistent productivity is not an accident. It happens through preparation and execution. It happens by fine-tuning a process. And it happens by building good habits, one step at a time.

Step One: Consider the Week Ahead

This was the biggest shock to me. The root of good time management is in the near future, not by making the best use of today’s sales actions. Start by thinking about next week this week. Put a lot of thought into what’s coming up — the major tasks, events, and opportunities — and when you might get those things done.

First, what are your known activities, both business and personal? Is there a plant tour scheduled? Do you have an RFQ coming in? Is there a sales meeting? Does little Daisy have a school play?

Productivity is achieved when you build around these events and add to them, thus making the most of each activity. For example, let’s say you have an appointment set up mid-morning on Tuesday that will take you an hour away from the office. Knowing this, you can schedule other activities to make the most of your time out of the office, such as:

• Phone calls to and from the meeting
• Set up a second appointment with another prospect
• Visit an existing account
• Prospect in the area (read — gather information, not cold calling)

You leave the office with a list of people to call (using Siri, of course!) — not one appointment but multiple — and your eyes open for new opportunities. Suddenly, one meeting has turned into several. Thinking ahead and good planning has made for efficient time away from the office. You check some phone calls off of your task list. You’ve worked on customer retention and development. All of that makes for an effective day of selling and all because you thought about next week this week.

The next thing to do when coming up with a draft for the week ahead is answer the question, “What is my new business plan?” As any good sales manager will tell you, every selling week must include some level of new business activity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that you are busy. And blah, blah, blah, managing the existing accounts is important. But if you are not constantly creating new opportunities, you are in for a world of hurt when current orders ship and there is nothing behind it. Or, God forbid, you lose a top account and suddenly cruise control turns into, “OMG, I haven’t prospected for new business since the Reagan administration. So, set some activity goals and then find a time slot on next week’s calendar to reach them.

Then there’s marketing. At bare minimum, you should be posting quality content on your LinkedIn page. Why? Because marketing is the new sales. Because prospective clients will research you via your LinkedIn page and if it is not interesting, compelling, doesn't contain lots of testimonials, and isn't full of worthwhile posts, you will be ignored, and you’ll never know why. Marketing curation via LinkedIn needs a place on your calendar, too.

As does some level of customer retention activity. If you think of your account base in terms of A, B, and C level customers, you can create a contact cadence that ensures no customer is ignored. “A” clients need a steady flow of new ideas. “A” and “B” clients should receive information relative to their industries (links to articles, for example) to let them know you are thinking of them. You might even use that drive time mentioned earlier for a check-in call.

I also believe your general sales activity goals for the week need to be specific. What are three things you will accomplish next week? You might:

• Identify and research seven “Big Fish” accounts
• Learn more about how AI can improve your sales actions
• Commit to making 15 calls per day
• Research possible networking opportunities in the area

When sales managers ask me, “What should I be working on with my sales rep?” my answer always includes establishing these kinds of short-term weekly goals. Ask the rep to bring three action items like this to a standing meeting (e.g. 8 a.m. Mondays). Then, follow up on their completion in the next meeting and come up with three more. Simple.

The last piece of preparing the week ahead has to do with managing known opportunities. Set up a spreadsheet and use the far left column to describe all existing opportunities. That is, where are your next orders going to come from? This is your “Opportunities List” and it is where you manage the week-to-week action items so nothing falls through the cracks. Got an action item coming up? Get it on the calendar.

Next week is a fuzzy Polaroid picture; one that becomes clearer as you get closer to it. You’ll be making adjustments constantly, but by creating a plan by looking at your repeatable activities, you have some place to start and a far better chance at efficiency. You’ll arrive Monday morning and have that week all laid out before you.

Step Two: Think About the Day Ahead

Now that the week is drafted out, your attention turns to the No. 1 rule of good time management: Never, never, never leave today without having tomorrow planned. If you want to make more out of the selling day, you need to arrive and already have a plan made. What’s more, you should also identify no more than three top priorities. These are the first tasks you will undertake. Then, run through the other items on your to-do list, prepare tomorrow before shutting down, rinse, and repeat.

There is a reason why so much time was spent describing step one versus step two. If you are properly prepared, doing the work is the easy part. Now that you are done with this column, practice what I’ve preached and get to work thinking about next week. Your next “OMG-I-can’t-believe-I-got-so-much-done” week needs prepping.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.