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Prioritizing Your Week

Written by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: It's the beginning of the week and as you review your calendar for the next five days you have a wide variety of events scheduled. You have some leads to follow up, some important calls to move existing opportunities along in the sales process, and a closing opportunity. In addition, you have some time scheduled with existing clients to make sure that they are getting what they need and you have your daily cold calls to make. How would you prioritize your week?

Prioritizing Your Week

It's the beginning of the week and as you review your calendar for the next five days you have a wide variety of events scheduled. You have some leads to follow up, some important calls to move existing opportunities along in the sales process, and a closing opportunity. In addition, you have some time scheduled with existing clients to make sure that they are getting what they need and you have your daily cold calls to make. How would you prioritize your week? If you weren't allowed to say, "they're all important", how would you rank them? Here they are in bullet form:

* Lead Follow Up Calls
* Move Existing Opportunities Forward
* Closing Opportunity
* Client Visits
* Daily Cold Calls

Chances are, if you chose Client visits, you are an account manager first. Account retention is more important than ever but, today, companies are looking for growth. While there is nothing wrong with making your clients the number one priority, I can also bet your income isn't growing!

I'm sure that if you chose Lead Follow Up Calls, you are a Hunter, your pipeline needs to be filled and you feel some urgency to jump on a lead while it's still hot or warm. You're also quite happy to have those leads instead of having to make cold calls!

If you chose Move Existing Opportunities Forward, you are more process oriented, have good attention to detail, and have the patience required to stay with an opportunity. Just be sure that when you are moving an opportunity forward, you are truly moving from 1st base to 2nd base; from 2nd base to 3rd base, or from 3rd base to home. If this is not the first time that you're moving from one base to another, then you've already taken some put-offs on these opportunities and you need to examine whether your prospects truly have compelling reasons to buy from you.

You are a closer if you chose Closing Opportunity. And if you chose Closing Opportunity, the single thing you must accomplish this week is to get that closable Opportunity closed. The fruits of your other labors this week will be realized at some point in the future. The only fruit you can harvest this week will be from that one closable opportunity so you will be judged harshly on your success with that opportunity. Closers have a tendency to pay less attention to the front end of their pipeline so don't procrastinate making those Lead Follow Up Calls!

Finally, for the three of you who chose Daily Cold Calls, I admire your discipline and commitment! You know how important it is to keep your pipeline filled and won't let anything get in the way. The more you have in your pipeline, the more confident you can be in your other sales calls. However, your ability to add opportunities to the pipeline is only as good as your ability to get those opportunities closed, which is in direct proportion to your ability to uncover their compelling reasons to buy and get them qualified. The more effective you are at closing, the fewer opportunities you need in the pipeline!

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Article Tags: account retention, attention to detail, cold calls, patience, pipeline, priority, prospects, single thing, urgency



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