7 Keys to Sales Time Management [Must Know]

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1. Say no to non-selling.

This is the most important point of focus for sales time management in general. There are so many forces pulling us away from what we should actually be doing, which is selling. The key is to clearly delineate selling tasks from non-selling tasks, and stay firm in your resolve to say no to non-selling activities.

2. Disqualify.

The biggest time-suck in sales is being in front of people who aren't going to buy. The faster you can end your interactions with non-buyers, the better off you’re going to be—and the more time you’ll have to spend with people who are actually a fit.

3. Use a CRM system to organize your process and your pipeline.

By using a strong CRM system, you can organize your entire sales process while keeping all of your information about prospects in one place, so there's no going back and forth.

4. Bigger is better than more.

Let me unpack that for you. In sales, we often have two choices: bigger or more. We can either make a volume play, where we just make lots of sales and focus on quantity (more); or we can make bigger sales—maybe fewer of them, but larger in size (bigger). In my experience, bigger is always better than more.

Now, there are obviously some exceptions to this. But, as a general rule, if you want to improve your sales time management and make more money, going after bigger sales is a more efficient use of your time than making more sales. In fact, our research shows that making a bigger sale doesn't actually take up that much more time than making a smaller sale. In the same amount of time, that one big sale can have the same impact from a profitability and revenue perspective as many, many smaller sales would.

So, focus on those bigger sales. I'm not saying that you should turn away smaller deals that come your way. But you should focus the majority your time on going after larger deals.

5. Stop following up.

Follow-up is one of the biggest time-wasters in sales. When I tell you to stop following up, I’m not saying you should just give up on leads that slip through the cracks. Rather, I’m challenging you to stop letting them slip through the cracks in the first place.

Don’t put yourself in a position where you have to follow up—ever. Instead, get obsessed with scheduling next steps. Every time you’re on the phone or on a Zoom or in front of a prospect in a meeting, schedule the next step right then and there.

If you have a concrete step scheduled with the prospect, you never have to follow up. You're always just following the next step. Everything's already in the calendar, so sales are moving along more efficiently. This sales time management approach will enable you to use your time much more efficiently than the average salesperson who's out there following up on every single lead.

6. Systematize your outreach.

When it comes to sales time management, most salespeople are making the mistake of using a haphazard outreach approach. This means that there’s nothing process-oriented about their prospecting activities. One day they walk into the office and say, "I'm going to make some calls today," and the next day they say, "Now I think I'm going to send out some emails." This hodgepodge of haphazard activity is one of the best ways to waste your time in sales.

Instead, you should systematize every single bit of outreach that you do. When you get to the office and start to work, you should know exactly who you have to reach out to, how to reach them, and exactly when to do it. It should all be laid out in front of you in an easy-to-follow prospecting plan. The more you can systematize this process, the more efficient you’ll be. And what’s more, you can actually automate a lot of those prospecting activities, too.

7. Use strong tools.

There are some really incredible sales time management tools out there today. You can, and should, leverage as many of these tools as possible to make yourself more efficient with your time. Through automation, organization, and systematization, these strong time management tools can support your activities, so that you don’t have to do everything manually anymore.