Spend Your Time Wisely

Learning Objectives 

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Create a tactical plan to achieve your goals.
• Identify high-impact activities.
• Manage competing priorities.
• Complete a time audit.

Time Is a Gift

Ever heard the expression, “Time is a gift”? Time is the most valuable asset we have—and one that is so easy to waste. In this module, you get top solutions from industry experts on how to feel accomplished every day, whether you work as a sales professional or in another role.

Go Ahead, Make a List

First, list out your tasks for the day. Why is making a list one of the top recommendations? In a word: dopamine. This is a powerful chemical that’s released when you complete a task. Dopamine focuses a person’s attention to get things done and can help you focus your efforts to cross items off your list each day.

Listen to Simon Sinek discuss how dopamine helps people complete tasks. The entire presentation is worthwhile, but the discussion about dopamine starts 8 minutes in and ends at 10:36.

So, you are going to keep to-do lists and cross off your tasks. But how do you know which tasks to select? How do you manage competing requests?  

Setting Goals

Ever climb into the car without knowing where you were going? You likely already have a destination in mind, and if you’re on a schedule, you need directions! 

How often do we go to work without thinking about where we want to be professionally in a week, month, quarter, or year from now? A Salesforce leader in Commercial Sales Enablement, shares the following advice.

Set weekly activity and pipeline metrics, so that when you achieve them, you can check those off and you’ve got some good motivation going forward into the next week. Repeat for each month, quarter, and year.

Now you’ve got your list of goals. But how do you organize your tasks?

It’s Easy as ABC123

ABC123 is a method to choose which task to do first and which later. Use ABC123 to consider each task for its impact on your annual contract value (ACV) or another high-priority target and the amount of time it takes to complete. It looks like this. 

Impact on ACV:

• A—Big
• B—Moderate
• C—Small

Time to complete:

• 1—Quick
• 2—Intermediate
• 3—Long

So don’t just start at the top of your list. Prioritize each item. Do A1 items first, since they have a big impact on ACV and are quick. These might include closing deals, quoting customers, prospecting, and customer events. Do C3 items last, since they have a small impact on meeting your revenue goals and take a long time. These might look like business requests, customer support, and going through your inbox.

Your list probably looks a little different. Maybe you prefer to clear out your inbox first thing every morning. You might focus your prospecting activities at different times of the day depending on your territory and time zone changes.

Managing competing requests isn’t easy. And we’re not going to presume to tell you what to do in a given situation; the number of factors is just too complicated. But, that’s why the ABC123 method is so helpful—you choose your top priorities.  

Let’s consider a few examples to apply ABC123, move through tasks, and bring in ACV.

What do you do when you are stuck on a task? Follow some of these tips.

Get UnStuck

1. Let people know early that the project is late.
2. See if the due date can be pushed out.
3. Give your brain a break and get back to it later.

One of the challenges for sales professionals is not always getting to set your own schedule. Put aside each day on your calendar to address unexpected tasks and use ABC123 to prioritize them.

You have a large task list that seems to grow daily. You’ve got your goals for the year, quarter, and month. But don’t stress out—you are the most valuable asset. Your personal responsibilities—taking care of loved ones, exercise, volunteering, and everything else are all part of keeping yourself healthy and producing for years into the future.

Time Check

If you want to get serious about maximizing your day, do a time audit. A time audit is just what it sounds like: a detailed log of everything you do for a week. 

Find some simple ways to keep track. There are a ton of time-tracking apps in the app store. Check out the resource section below for some recommendations.

The key to this exercise is to be honest. Not including the amount of time spent shopping online or scrolling the internet hurts your goal to find out how you are spending your day.

Consider Using the Five Whys Method

Do you ever feel like you keep running into the same problem? We recommend asking “Why?” five times to get to the root cause. This is known as the Five Whys method

. Here’s an example.

1. Why am I not getting home in time to eat dinner with my family?
   • Because I leave work too late.
2. Why am I leaving work too late?
   • Because I was finishing up last-minute tasks.
3. Why was I finishing up last-minute tasks?
   • Because I didn’t do them before my first meeting.
4. Why didn’t I get to the office early?
   • Because it took longer than planned to get ready for work.
5. Why did it take longer to get to work?
   • Because I didn’t budget the right amount of time in the morning.

So the problem was getting home late. But the root problem was not leaving enough time in the morning. Reorganize the morning routine to fix the root problem.

You can apply the Five Whys method to understand the cause of any time management challenge you are facing: getting home for dinner, finishing projects, meeting your metrics, or finding time to relax. 

Now that you’ve identified your top challenges and their root causes, it’s time for some insight into using time management to be your most productive self.

Resources

• External Link: Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix
• Article: To Get to the Root of a Hard Problem Just Ask Why Five Times