As a sales professional, it’s crucial to be productive in order to achieve your goals and put up your best results. However, with the constant demands and distractions of the modern work environment, it can be challenging to stay on top of your tasks and commitments. To help you boost your productivity and achieve success in your sales career, we’ve compiled a list of productivity principles, as outlined by Anthony Annarino, a productivity expert and coach.
Start Your Week with a Plan in Place
One of the most important actions you can take to improve your productivity is to plan your week before it starts. By planning your week ahead of time, you’ll be able to determine what you need to do and when you need to do it, without having to spend time figuring it out as the week progresses. This will prevent you from opening your inbox and scouring the hundreds of emails that have poured in overnight and it will also prevent you from starting your day in a reactive mode instead of a proactive one.
To plan your week effectively, start by reviewing your prior week to make sure that you block time for any follow-up work you need to do or to keep any commitment you’ve already made to a prospective client or a current client. Make sure to get these things on your calendar so you don’t leave any open loops and so you always appear to your clients to be buttoned up and on top of all the commitments you make.
Block Three 90-Minute Sessions Each Day
One of the most effective ways to boost your productivity as a sales professional is to block three 90-minute sessions of focused work each day. This amounts to 4.5 hours of focused work, assuming that you work an eight-hour day. By committing four and a half hours to sales-related tasks, projects, and initiatives, you’ll be able to take care of everything that’s most important, leaving three and a half hours for you to respond to the needs of your clients, your company, or anything else that needs your attention.
Blocking 90 minutes to respond to a request for proposal, for example, ends up taking you something like 48 minutes total because you dedicated the time and you blocked out all distractions. This will lead to you being far more productive than you would be otherwise.
Make Your First 90-Minute Session a Prospecting Block
To maximize your productivity, make your first 90-minute session of the day a prospecting block and do it first thing in the morning. The time of day that you prospect can be a superstition for some people, but whatever you believe feels true to you, the important thing is to make sure that you dedicate a specific block of time to prospecting each day.
By dedicating specific blocks of time to your most important tasks, you’ll be able to focus on what’s important and avoid distractions. By following these productivity principles, you’ll be well on your way to achieving success in your sales career.
