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Sales Training London: Are You Staying The Right Side of the Trouble Line

Guest post by: Marcus Cauchi

Article Overview: What's the Trouble Line? There is no clocking in or out in sales but Time is finite and unrecoverable. Use it or lose it. Hit your targets for profitability and then spend the rest of the year playing golf, watching TV or climbing Everest. Lunch is for those who've earned it.

Sales Training London: Are You Staying The Right Side of the Trouble Line

There's trouble ahead when you do non-paytime activities (reading your favourite blog or online networking site, playing video games, posting blogs during paytime hours (the hours of 0830-1830h hours weekdays are paytime for most of us). There's trouble ahead if you spend your time servicing non-prospects who never intend to buy from you but you think that by being nice, answering their questions, giving them all the free consulting they could want .... you might secure some business eventually.

You don't need me to tell you what I've done to waste time. But may I suggest you invest 5 minutes to become aware of just how much time YOU DO waste. If you look back at last week how much time did you waste? Did you move pens, shuffle papers to avoid making that difficult phone call? Did you clean the oven rather than cold call? Did you do your expenses rather than set up a meeting with a prospect? I don't suppose you've ever found yourself calling someone who never says "no" to you, is always nice and sounds interested, maybe even asks you to send information .... in preference to taking the risk that a genuine prospect will say "no thanks".

If you were honest with yourself, how much time did you really spend on highly productive activity that moved your business forwards? When I do this exercise with my clients, most tell me that they're spending less than 35% of their paytime involved in paytime activities (productive activities that move their business forwards).

If you calculate how much business you do with your current level of timewasting, imagine how much business you could write if you were 10%, 20% or 30% more productive you can be by disciplining yourself to do your non-paytime activities during non-paytime hours. Can you commit to not using Ecademy during the daytime for three days in the week, maybe 4? Can you commit to writing your marketing plan after 6pm? Can you do your expenses after putting the kids to bed? Can you not watch that 9am episode of Bewitched and make a cold call instead?

There is trouble ahead for those who don't use their paytime hours for paytime activities. You know it. Make a decision to be productive and stay the right side of the trouble line.



(C) Copyright Sandler Sales Institute 2006

Happy selling!

Regards

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