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If you enter \u2018Time Management Book\u2019 in Amazon\u2019s search bar, you will receive 43,584 results. These books offer hundreds of ways to maximize your time to be more efficient. But not many are focused specifically on the particular challenges sales professionals face. Online distractions and email addiction are often major problems for salespeople who spend much of their time online in an effort to stay up to date and competitive.<\/p>\n
So, how does an overwhelmed sales professional free up time to focus on high impact selling activities and maintain a healthy work\/life balance? Jill Konrath\u2019s<\/a> latest book More Sales, Less Time<\/a>, answers these questions.<\/p>\n Packed with actionable advice on how to succeed in the age of distraction, this book promises to help you reclaim at least an hour a day, free up time to focus on priority sales activities, optimize your sales process, and transform your life by incorporating new, more productive habits.<\/p>\n Shortly after my last book Snap Selling \u2013 all about selling to crazy-busy buyers<\/em> \u2013 came out, I was speaking in front of a large group of salespeople at a conference. Afterward, a sales rep named Matt, came up to me and said, \u201cJill this is really good stuff for buyers and I see how this is going to work but I am crazy busy too! What do you have for sales people?\u201d<\/p>\n He went on to describe his life. He would get up in the morning, race to the office, work around the clock, and try to meet his recently raised quota. He just couldn\u2019t see any way to get it all done AND have a life AND be a father to his children.<\/p>\n The problem was, I didn\u2019t have a response for Matt. I was feeling exactly the same way. As more time went on, there were more and more salespeople coming up to me saying, \u201cI\u2019m crazy busy. What advice do you have for me?\u201d And I didn\u2019t know the answer.<\/p>\n And finally, I got sick of not knowing. I was so crazy busy that I couldn\u2019t stand it either. I needed to find a solution. And every time I address a sales challenge, and figure out a way to resolve it, I write a book about it. Thus, More Sales, Less Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n The biggest reason salespeople fall behind is something that they haven\u2019t a clue that they\u2019re doing. They jump around from one task to another all day long. And, they think that\u2019s the way they\u2019re supposed to work. They get online in the morning, check email, think of something else they need to do, jump on LinkedIn, then check email, then jump to writing that proposal they need to work on, but then they think, \u201cI better check email\u201d.<\/p>\n All day long, they are moving from one focus to another. But the time increment between task jumping is miniscule. Research shows it used to be 3.5 minutes before people would switch tasks but with the digital age, it\u2019s now 2-2.5 minutes. Research also shows that 72 percent of people respond to an email within six seconds. And, since they have so much riding on them, salespeople are amongst those who are constantly checking and responding to email. One of them just might be from the prospect they were hoping they\u2019d close today. And as a result, their whole day is a function of disruption.<\/p>\n What we really need to consider is what this disruption does to our thinking and overall productivity. Research shows if you\u2019re constantly disrupted, you\u2019re adding an hour or two to your workday. But, this disruption also harms your thinking ability. And today, in order to be successful in sales, you need to be a world-class thinker. You need to be strategic, a fast-learner, up-to-date on what\u2019s going on, and have insights for clients. Your head needs to be in the game, but if you\u2019re bouncing around, it won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n Habits are really hard to change \u2013 and I had no idea how hard they were until I started changing small habits of mine to get more done. I found out that my brain wanted to do things a certain way. For example, my brain was stuck on email. Every time a new email came in my brain instantly thought \u2013 \u201cbetter check that!\u201d<\/p>\n When we try to change habits, our brains create a massive resistance. To overcome this, you need to create goals and be really clear on what you want to accomplish. The goal can be anything from freeing up more time so you can get out of the office and have fun, to working hard to earn that promotion. Once you have established that goal, you need to ask yourself what you need to do differently and come up with a positive action \u2013 one that you can start doing and not one that you should stop doing.<\/p>\n It\u2019s harder to change habits than we think. But in order to get more sales in less time, we absolutely have to change these default bad habits.<\/p>\n As I mentioned before, most salespeople feel a strong sense of urgency and are constantly checking their emails, often responding within seconds. And, in some jobs, such as Inside Sales Reps, when your job is to follow up on leads coming in, there is research to support that quick replies have an impact on sales success.<\/p>\n But with the average salesperson, responding to an email in five seconds versus 60 minutes does not necessarily impact sales success.<\/p>\n How do you figure out if limiting time on email will affect your sales? Try conducting an urgency experiment. In my book, I discuss conducting this experiment myself. For a couple of days, I tested if not replying within 15 minutes would have any effect on my relationship with the client. I found there was no effect \u2013 and most of you will find the same thing.<\/p>\n In reality, our email is not as urgent as we think it is and it\u2019s killing productivity. Research shows people who constantly check email are lowering their intelligence. Women who constantly check email drop their IQ by five points, and men drop it by a catastrophic 15 points.<\/p>\n So if we want to be really good at our sales jobs, we should not let email harm our ability to think, learn, and make critical decisions for our clients.<\/p>\n Most people think they need to master time management but time management assumes that you\u2019re in an office and not living online. In reality, salespeople live online \u2013 it\u2019s just how we do our jobs today.<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s communicating via email or social networks, or doing research on clients, salespeople are online and thus, living in a world where they are constantly exposed to distractions. In fact, the other day I found myself looking up, \u201cTop Celebrity Plastic Surgery Fails.\u201d<\/p>\n Can we manage that? That\u2019s not time management \u2013 it\u2019s distraction management. We have to use a whole lot of different techniques to protect us. What I found is we have to create a firewall around us.<\/p>\n A firewall is protection from the storm of the distraction that\u2019s around you. It\u2019s admitting that we are powerless in this age of distraction of getting sucked in. I know I am not capable of preventing distraction myself \u2013 so I need a firewall to protect me.<\/p>\n How do you create a firewall? The first thing I did was use a software application called \u201cRescue Time\u201d to investigate how I was really spending my time online. It was a rude awakening to see the amount of time I wasted being distracted.<\/p>\n The next step was getting my email monitoring under control. I was spending too much time constantly checking incoming email, which the majority of the time was not even work-related. To stop this time-sucking habit, I signed up for \u201cenroll.me.\u201d It\u2019s a wonderful application that gives you the choice of whether or not you want to receive your subscription emails. I\u2019ve been using this application for over a year now and I have unsubscribed from over 1,244 email subscriptions. Ultimately, this tool has given me an inbox that is much more friendly to work with.<\/p>\n Another software application I highly suggest using to create your firewall is called \u201cFreedom.\u201d Freedom is an app that will help you reduce distractions by blocking you from certain websites and apps for a period of time. When I have some focused work that I need to complete distraction-free, I launch \u201cFreedom.\u201d It gives me the opportunity to set a time limit for how long I want to be protected, and what sites and apps I want to avoid, and it works on all my devices \u2013 so I can\u2019t cheat and check my email on my cellphone. And, we all cheat if we don\u2019t protect ourselves with that firewall.<\/p>\n I actually wanted to call my book Optimize Me<\/em> because I think that\u2019s really what it\u2019s about \u2013 it\u2019s how to get the most from yourself. Once you protect yourself from those distractions, you need to figure out how to spend the time you\u2019ve reclaimed.<\/p>\n Start by asking yourself this question \u2013 what\u2019s the most important thing I should be working on?<\/p>\n Most salespeople when they get to work they sit down and immediately start going through all their emails. Then boom \u2013 an hour and a half is gone and they haven\u2019t really worked on anything essential.<\/p>\n The important question sellers should ask themselves at the beginning of the day is, \u201cWhat do I NEED to get done?\u201d Looking at all the things you could do and knowing you simply do not have enough time to do all of them, what one thing will help you reach your goal today?<\/p>\n Don\u2019t just jump into work. By taking that time to focus, you actually do what you need to do.<\/p>\n Another thing that\u2019s crucial, and that a lot of people don\u2019t realize, is that our brains are not meant to sit at a computer all day long. It actually wears us out.<\/p>\n We need to think about working our day in blocks of time focused on specific activities. Put them on your calendar. Work in blocks. Then allow yourself to take a break.<\/p>\n One study on what differentiated top performers found that top performers work really hard for 52 minutes and then take a 17-minute break. The study found that the break gave their brain a chance to relax. They socialized with people, got up and moved around and, when they got back to their computer, they were much more productive.<\/p>\n The best thing to do is to leave your computer because when you do, your brain turns into mind wandering mode and finds the answers \u2013 better answers \u2013 to the questions you\u2019ve been thinking about.<\/p>\n First of all, trying to control our lives and to be so disciplined is perhaps one of the hardest things we ever have to do. You\u2019re only given a certain amount of willpower per day and if you\u2019re using it to go online and fight distractions, you wear yourself out much faster and actually reduce the quality of your thinking.<\/p>\n For me, it was so hard to change my habits, and I work remotely so I have to motivate myself \u2013 which can be a real challenge.<\/p>\n In order to change and become someone who got a lot done during the day, I actually decided to invent a game for myself. I studied gamification and read a number of books. I created an avatar for myself with challenges where I could move up through levels. But, it was such a pain to actually use the game I threw it away.<\/p>\n But I had one thing that changed everything for me \u2013 my avatar, Jill the Time Master. Each day when I got in the office, I would see the picture of my avatar hanging on the wall, and it would motivate me to play the role of Time Master. It was really silly and I never told anyone about it for a long time. But by playing the role of Time Master, I actually became the Time Master.<\/p>\n Research indicates that when you act as if you\u2019re someone else, you start to possess some of the qualities you are pretending to be.<\/p>\n My day started changing as I started becoming the avatar. Jill the Time Master didn\u2019t try to fight habits \u2013 she created new ones.<\/p>\n There are many things salespeople can do to accelerate their sales \u2013 and this is something that has always fascinated me and was the focus of all my previous books.<\/p>\n First and foremost, people can study their craft and become better salespeople. The more you spend time determining the effectiveness of your actions and studying different ways to interact with customers and help them realize the value of change, the more successful you will be.<\/p>\n But, there are other strategies you can use to accelerate your sales. One thing I always felt was crucial to sales success was leveraging trigger events. Trigger events are things that happen \u2013 internal or external to a company \u2014 that change the organization\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n One example of this could be a bad third quarter earnings report. If a company has a bad third quarter, all of a sudden there is going to be pressure across the board to reduce costs and drive more sales. So, how can you leverage the fact that your client needs to be more cost conscience? Well, your product may help increase productivity or efficiency. If you can call someone right now, while they\u2019re under pressure to meet these objectives, and craft a personalized message to get in, you\u2019re more likely to get the sale. If you track your client\u2019s environment, you can leverage the trigger event to get in the company.<\/p>\n Another thing you can do to accelerate sales is to make decisions simpler for your prospects. In many cases, salespeople will want to impress prospects, so they tend to overcomplicate things and send an information overload. But prospects are busy people. They barely have time to read your message let alone read three pages of information on the value of your product\/service. Simplifying things as much as you can really contributes to accelerating sales.<\/p>\n Those are just some strategies mentioned in my book.<\/p>\n At the front end, salespeople need to be able to pique someone\u2019s curiosity. They really need to look at their value proposition and figure out what is of most interest to prospects. But people at the front end of the sales cycle, often haven\u2019t made these decisions before and they\u2019re quite overwhelmed.<\/p>\n Research shows in many decisions, there are 6-7 people involved. And, they feel overwhelmed and don\u2019t know how to make the decision. One thing you can do is help them create a road map that shows where they are in the buying cycle currently and how that matches up with your other clients who are making similar decisions. You can then outline a typical process other companies are following to get them from where there are today to their end goal. The road map helps clarify exactly what they will need to do and also establishes you as a knowledgeable person who has worked with similar companies before and truly understands how their company works.<\/p>\n Another thing that makes a big difference is talking about the tough stuff. Discuss the challenges they may face and propose solutions to how to handle them. For example, the financial department is going to want know about risk. You can present the client with some ideas on how they can reduce the risk and get the financial department to buy into the decision. Your client is in a situation where they have to get all buying decision makers to agree. Help make that process easier by providing advice on how to overcome challenges, and how you can make a difference.<\/p>\n One final thing that helps keep overwhelmed buyers moving is not to try to oversell them. Start with one thing to get them working with you on the project \u2013 perhaps doing research or working with one area in the company. By doing that, you get your foot in the door and have an opportunity to show your value, develop a relationship, find out more ways to help them, and build the deal as you go along.<\/p>\n Yes, I can! Let me first say \u2013 it helped me gain sanity. If you\u2019re constantly working around the clock it is exhausting and you are not your best self. The best thing these strategies taught me personally, was to limit the number of hours I was working. My goal was to hold my income steady, but not work so much.<\/p>\n Now, I\u2019m working on reducing the number of hours even more to see if I can still earn the same income in fewer hours. I started out this project really crazy-busy. And it\u2019s almost as if I wore that as a badge of honor \u2013 I was proud to be crazy busy and proud that everybody \u2018needed\u2019 me. It made me feel invaluable.<\/p>\n But what I found out is being crazy-busy is something I control, and I\u2019m not at my best when I\u2019m out of control. I really believe people can sell more in less time.<\/p>\nPeak Sales Marketing Specialist and Sales Hiring Expert <\/strong>Taylor Dumouchel<\/strong><\/a> caught up with Jill to discuss how salespeople can succeed in the age of distraction:<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Jill, what was your inspiration for writing More Sales, Less Time?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nThe book is a model for how salespeople can succeed in the age of distraction. What would you say are the top causes of salespeople falling behind in their work?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
You say in order to overcome distractions, there needs to be a change. However, as you mention in the book, our brains are resistant to breaking bad habits. How can we overcome time-sucking temptations and recover lost time? <\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nLet\u2019s talk about email again. In the book, you advise readers to avoid checking email constantly. However, salespeople often feel the need to get back to important clients or prospects immediately. Will limiting time on email harm their sales?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
How are the distraction-busters mentioned in your book more effective than traditional time management strategies?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
You mentioned a firewall, tell me what a firewall is?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Your book teaches salespeople to reclaim time lost to distractions. How can they then optimize the time they do have to sell more? <\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nYou talk about how gamification is used as a tool to help salespeople spark internal motivation to optimize their time. How can salespeople who work remotely or aren\u2019t part of a \u201cteam\u201d motivate themselves, when self-discipline becomes tiring?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Now that readers have minimized distraction and optimized time, let\u2019s dive into the next part \u2013 more sales. What are some tips salespeople can use to accelerate their sales?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What are some strategies you recommend to help salespeople to keep overwhelmed buyers moving?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Finally, can you tell us how using the strategies in your book helped you gain more sales, in less time?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nWatch the full interview with Jill:\u00a0<\/em><\/h2>\n