The Importance of Good Time Management in Sales

Time management is an important skill that all salespeople should learn how to master and key performance indicators are a great way to measure how well your salespeople manage their time. The most important KPI that you might use to measure performance is the number of sales each salesperson makes in a week or month. While this can certainly be helpful in determining how “good” your salespeople are at selling, it is also important to consider the quality of each of these sales along with the interactions that come before it. Sometimes it is better to make fewer substantial sales than many small ones that are underqualified or require. With the help of good time management skills, your salespeople can… 

Identify which prospects are worth talking to  

While all prospects should be valued by your company, not every prospect is going to be closable or bring much value to your company. Your company will be presented with good and bad opportunities. Some opportunities will be underqualified, so selling those anyway may not be good for business – you need to make sure your salespeople know what opportunities you are looking for so that they don’t waste their time on opportunities that won’t bring any value to the company. Early on, your salespeople should be able to identify whether there is a closable prospect on the other end of the line. How can they do this? Ask good questions! Find out if this prospect will require too much handholding for not enough revenue to justify it. Probe into the parameters that allow you to determine the revenue. If price is most important, determine if that’s a client that will jump ship to the next vendor that’s a dollar less in 6 months (and then run the other way!) It is important for your salespeople to develop good time management skills because this will allow them to know when to end a conversation with a prospect that is not promising and to move on to other opportunities.  

Identify which part of the sales cycle each opportunity is in  

It is not only important to talk to the right people, but it also important to talk to the right people at the right time. Good time management skills will also encourage your salespeople to prioritize opportunities based on their stage in the sales cycle. Obviously, you want your salespeople to spend more time speaking and engaging with prospects that you are closer to closing deals with. Once your salespeople have moved those top-priority prospects through the entire sales cycle, they can move on to prospects that are in the beginning stages, yet still have potential to make it through the entire cycle. According to InsightSquared, “When executed effectively, prioritizing opportunities for optimal sales pipeline management can save your reps a great deal of time, lead to more accurate sales forecasts and grow your company’s revenue significantly.”   

Attack high-priority leads strategically  

When your salespeople have limited time, it becomes important to learn how to strategically attack high-priority leads and figure out what needs to be done to make these sales happen. Some strategies your salespeople should consider when talking to high-priority leads are:  

1. Develop better rapport with high-priority leads- developing a good rapport with prospects during a call is an incredibly important part of the sales process and having the time to do so is beneficial. It will help your salespeople learn more about what quality prospects are looking for and, ultimately, help your salespeople develop their sales scripts and better communicate with closable prospects. This is relationship building 101. 
2. Follow up with high-priority leads via email – your salespeople should follow up with leads that they are interested in closing deals with. This will, hopefully, move your high-priority leads through the sales cycle faster, giving your salespeople more time to focus on making other sales 
3. Have an evolving “top 50” list of prospects so it always remains clear who your “A” prospects are. Ensure there’s a data field in your CRM that allows this identification to be pulled up in a search at any given time. 

As your salespeople develop good time management skills, and the ability to identify “good prospects,” it is likely that more quality sales (not necessarily more sales) will come your way. With the help of good time management skills, your salespeople can identify which prospects are worth talking to, identify which part of the sales cycle each opportunity is in, and attack high-priority leads strategically. In the event that your company is struggling with time management and needs assistance creating a high-quality prospect list or generating more sales appointments to fill the funnel, MarketReach is here to help! With prospect list management and lead generation services, you will have more time on your hands than you’ve ever had before.