True Selling Worth

WHAT’S YOUR SELLING TIME REALLY WORTH?


As an entrepreneur, sales trainer, and mentor, it has been my experience that business professionals do not place enough focus on the true hourly worth of their selling time, and thus, spend countless hours on tasks or activities that mean very little to their short or long term success.

Why?

In most cases, they don’t fully realize how much selling time they are actually wasting because they have never really kept track of time expenditure, and don’t know how to figure out what their selling time is really worth.

It is my belief that the business person that fully understands the importance of being productive during hours related to selling will almost always perform better than the business person that ignores hourly worth (and time expenditure) all together.

To that end, this article is designed to give you the knowledge of how to make your selling time work for you so that you can make the very most of your selling efforts and become more successful in the process.

Moving right along, the first thing I’m going to do is provide you with a method for determining your true hourly worth, and than a method for determining your current productivity level.

Then, I will offer suggestions for how to ensure that you are operating at maximum productivity during each hour of the day that you focus on sales.

So, without further delay, let’s get started.

Step # 1: Determining your hourly worth
Determining your hourly worth is quite easy if you use the simple mathematical calculation below.

Start with the total revenue you plan to achieve this year as a result of your personal sales efforts (say $1,000,000 – varies by industry) and divide that number by 52 (weeks per year) to get your worth per week. Next, divide the number you found above by 40 (hours per week) to get your hourly worth and that is what you are worth (per hour) to your company during every hour of the selling day.

For example, using the formula above, the calculations would be as follows:

$1,000,000 / 52 weeks = $19,230.77 (weekly worth)
$19,230.77 / 40 hours per week = $480.77 (hourly worth)
In this case your selling time is worth $480.77 per hour

Now that we know your true hourly worth, we have to figure out if every one of your selling hours is currently producing at a level of $480.77 per hour to determine if your days are as productive as they could be.

Step # 2: Figuring out how you currently spend your selling time
To determine if you are spending your selling time in a productive manner, you will need to track all of your tasks for an extended period (say two weeks) so as to figure out how you spend every sales focused hour of the day. In this step, literally keep track of how many minutes you spend doing every task during each day and put the findings on paper. Any format you use will be acceptable as long as your entire day is broken down and accounted for.

For best results, it is crucial that you be completely honest with yourself during this exercise.

If you find that you are actually spending a lot less time then you think taking care of non-revenue producing activities, don’t be surprised. A recent study showed that the average sales focused person spends just 93 minutes in front of customers each day.

Staggering but true.

When you are trying to determine how you spend your time each day, be sure to include every activity. A daily average after two weeks might show the following time allocations:

Driving Time – 95 minutes
Socializing – 110 minutes
Coffee Breaks – 35 minutes
Administrative Tasks – 65 minutes
Actual Selling Time – 105 minutes
Customer Office Waiting Time – 30 minutes
Lunch – 45 minutes

Total Selling Time: 105 minutes

Assuming this was your findings, you now know that you’re not even spending two hours engaged in sales activities each day, and therefore you’re certainly not producing at a level of $480.77 every single hour. I had a similar finding several years back when I broke down my own time expenditure and I chose to do something about it. Not only because I was shocked by the finding, but also because I was excited about the fact that I had just found a way to put more hours into my day.

Now the good news.

If your goal is to double your revenue this knowledge might be able to help you do so. The calculations above tell you that doubling the amount of time you spend on sales related activities might in fact help you in doubling your revenue.

In the sample provided, that would mean simply finding a way to spend 210 minutes in front of customers each day as opposed to 105 minutes.

Now, let’s see what we can do to make sure this newfound knowledge doesn’t go to waste.

Okay, so let’s conclude that you would like to double your revenue, here are 4 simple ways you can strive to do so.

1) Make yourself accountable: A great way to ensure that you spend your time wisely is to make yourself accountable. For instance, now that you know your hourly worth and how to track your daily time expenditure, try posting a note with the following words in several visible places: “Is the task that I’m doing right now truly worth $480.77 per hour”???? Places in which this note could be placed include your desk, your car, your bathroom mirror, etc.

2) Learn to say no: Depending upon the nature of your business and your staff’s experience level, you might be able to say no to certain tasks or internal meetings that are interfering with your personal productivity. Delegate when it makes sense to do so but be careful here in how you handle saying no. The idea is to make you more productive, not hated by staff.

3) Minimize social chatting: Learning to minimize weekday lunches with friends and extended coffee breaks with talkative staff is a great way to reduce wasted time. Just be sure you don’t completely rid yourself of relaxation and socialization. I’m not trying to turn you into a workaholic here. Just trying to make you more productive. I truly enjoy good conversation and I understand that this is a tough one to confront. Especially if you too enjoy conversing with friends and staff during the work day, but you must strive to keep the eye on the prize and keep socializing to a minimum during your selling time.

4) Reward yourself: Every time you can truly say that you increased your productivity during a week or that you feel you had a productive and successful week, reward yourself. Be strict with the rewards and only allow yourself the reward if you truly earned it. In no time at all, you’ll find yourself wanting these little (or big) rewards and you’ll work even harder to make sure you earn them. Rewards can be great motivators. Just make sure that you can afford the reward. I don’t want you to go broke trying to get rich.


True Selling Worth - To learn more about this author, visit Corey Poirier's Website.

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