How many times have you gotten up in the morning and headed out for your first call without a clear idea of what you were going to do once you arrived there? Or how often have you arrived at a sales call and realized that you didn’t have everything you needed for that call? Has your manager ever asked you for a monthly plan, and you didn’t have any ready response?
All of these are indications of one of the field salesperson’s most common tendencies: to act before you think. It’s a frequently occurring malady from which even the best and most experienced salespeople suffer.
It is a symptom of a deeper condition—the inclination toward action, which is a personality trait typical of field salespeople. We like being active, we like confronting the world, solving problems, and making things happen. So we can go through a day, a week, a month, a year, even a career by bouncing from one problem to be solved to another.
Imagine a popcorn maker—the older style that consisted of a hot plate surrounded by a glass jar. Put the popcorn and some hot oil in the bottom, and turn the popcorn maker on. Pretty soon the oil will start to sizzle, and one of the kernels will explode and careen up and against the side of the glass canister. A second or two later another will do the same. Before long, dozens of popcorn kernels are exploding with bursts of energy and bouncing around in a display of totally unfocused power.
Many salespeople are like that. A customer calls with a problem, Bam! Go fix it. Another calls and wants a quote on something. Pow! Chase after that. Before long, we’re expending a tremendous amount of energy, responding and reacting to the slightest pull and tug of our customers. We’re like that popcorn, exploding in countless directions. Just imagine what we could accomplish if we could harness all that power and focus it in one direction.
That’s what this management secret is all about. Focus. Disciplining yourself to invest a certain quantity of time in order to focus your efforts where they will return the greatest amount to you. You do that by disciplining yourself.
Notice the word discipline. It’s a key concept for smart time managers. What’s a discipline? It’s an exercise or a process to which you commit yourself. You repeatedly engage in it because you know it’s a good thing to do. You know that it will bring you good results, even though it may not be that pleasant or exciting.
I discipline myself to swim laps a couple of mornings each week, for example. Honestly, I don’t particularly enjoy getting up early, especially in the winter, and driving off in the cold and dark to jump into a swimming pool of cool water, and mindlessly laboring back and forth for 35 minutes. It’s not high on my list of pleasurable activities. But I’ve done it regularly for almost 20 years. Why? Because I know that it is good for me. It prevents lower back pain, increases my energy, reduces stress, and enables me to put in a calm and focused day. It’s a discipline.
A pilot preparing to fly an airliner first goes through a checklist of items. Most pilots have done that checklist hundreds or thousands of times. I’m sure they would rather be doing something else than sitting in the cockpit methodically working through a checklist of items to review. Why do they do it? It’s a discipline that results in safer flights.
There are certain disciplines for salespeople that will bring about good results when they are practiced regularly. Thinking about it before you do it is one such discipline.
Remember my discussion of obstacles to effective time management in the first chapter? I talked about that inclination in the personality of most salespeople to act first and think later. I also discussed the rapid flow of events that often crowd into a salesperson’s day, making immediate reaction too often the primary mode of dealing with things. Because of this potent combination of pressures—one internal and one external— it’s important that salespeople build certain disciplines into their routines. These disciplines protect us from ourselves and allow us to handle the furious confluence of stuff we have to deal with.
This management secret requires that you spend a certain amount of time in the discipline of directed thought. In the next chapter, I’ll discuss the quality of that time, but for now, our focus is the right quantity.
The planning cycle
Smart time managers discipline themselves to adhere to a cycle of planning events and processes. This cycle should become part of the discipline of every field salesperson. The cycle looks like this:
An annual planning retreat of one to three days.
Quarterly planning sessions of one-half to one day.
Monthly planning sessions of approximately one-half day.
Weekly plans.
Daily preparation.
Pre-call preparation.
Post-call reflection.
Over the years, I’ve developed a guideline that works very well for field salespeople:
Now, that doesn’t mean that you get to take every Friday off. But it does mean that you discipline yourself to invest sufficient time in planning and preparing so that your time will be more effectively used. It does mean that you follow this planning cycle.
Annual planning retreat
One of my clients brings all of his salespeople into the office for a planning retreat once a year. In this retreat, every salesperson creates sales goals for every category of product they sell and for every account they serve. This information is then entered into the computer, and becomes part of the standard by which that salesperson is measured.
Another client does something similar. Salespeople come together for an annual goal-setting and strategy-developing retreat. At this three-day event, they meet with their sales manager and create specific goals for the year. With the manager, they jointly develop the overall strategy for achieving those goals.
It is not unusual for a company to gather its salespeople together, bring me in to do a “sales time management” seminar, and then follow that with a couple days of intense planning.
You may be thinking, “Isn’t this is lot of unnecessary paperwork? Aren’t the salespeople wasting time being out of the field?” No, just the opposite. These companies have wisely created special planning times for their sales force because they know that it’s worth the time and money that it takes.
It may be that your company organizes a similar planning event. If so, good for you. If not, then you need to organize it yourself. Remember, it is one of the disciplines of the most successful salespeople.
Find a time of year when you are the least busy. I find the time between Christmas and New Year’s Day to be perfect for me, but you may have a different time. Block out one to three days in that time period, and don’t schedule any appointments for those days.
Find a space where you can work virtually uninterrupted. This may take some creativity. I doubt if it’s your company office. It may be your home if you have a room in which you can seal yourself off. One year, I was one of two people responsible for leading an organization. The two of us drove to a state park, climbed in the back of my old conversion van, and worked in the back of the van all day long. We were isolated and uninterrupted.
Gather the materials you’ll need: all your account folders, account profiles, your company’s goals for the year, information about key products, services, or categories, computer print-outs of last year’s sales, maps of your geographical territory, and anything else you may want to review.
Focus on what you are going to produce in this planning event—the output or result of your efforts. You are going to create these things:
A set of sales goals for your territory.
A basic strategy for reaching those goals.
A well-defined ABC analysis of your customers and prospects.
Individual goals and strategic plans for each of your key (A) accounts.
A basic territory plan.
A set of learning goals.
Sounds arduous, and it is. But when you spend disciplined, focused time thinking about these things in detail, it will allow you to do good work; to prepare the best, most effective plans that you are capable of; and it will free you to implement effectively when you are in the field.
Later in the year, you won’t be tempted to head out on Monday morning without a clear plan in mind, because you have spent this time formulating the plan. And when the press of customer problems and inquiries threatens to overwhelm you and force you into becoming too reactive, you’ll be held on track by the goals and plans you created in your planning discipline.
Outcomes
Let’s consider three of these outcomes of your planning retreat.
1. A set of sales goals for your territory.
Your work should lead you to a series of sales goals for your territory. In order to get there, you must first determine the categories of goals that you are going to create. It may be that you work for a company that has already determined this, like my clients described above. If so, good for you. If not, then it will be up to you to determine your own set of categories. Depending on your unique set of products and services and your company’s emphasis, you may create goals for the following, most frequently used, categories:
A. Total sales.
B. Total gross margin.
C. Number of units.
D. Total sales per product category (dollars, gross margin, or units) for each of several categories of product or service that you sell.
E. Goals for acquiring new accounts.
This is just a list of the most common sales goals. You can have a virtually unlimited variety of goals. The categories of goals are up to you, your company, and your manager.
I’d suggest no more than five categories. Remember, one of the reasons you create goals is to help you focus your energies on the most important issues, and thus become more effective. More than five goals defeats that purpose. Too many goals cause you to diffuse your energies, not focus them.
Let’s illustrate. Assume that I sell sophisticated cleaning equipment and supplies to three different market segments: manufacturers, school systems, and shopping malls. My product line consists of a series of heavy-duty floor cleaning machines and the associated supplies used by those machines. I select the following categories to create goals:
1. Total sales.
2. Total number of cleaning machines.
3. Total number of Superscrubbers, our new, high-tech machine.
4. Number of new accounts.
5. Total sales of supplies (as opposed to equipment).
Now that you have determined the categories on which to focus, you need to create specific numbers for each. This is where the art comes in. You consider your company’s goals and your understanding of what the market is doing. You factor in your best understanding of what your competitors are doing, and you consider your customers’ situations and yours. Out of this comes your best attempt to predict a result that will cause you to stretch, but not be unreasonable.
I prefer to look at each account individually, think about it, and determine it’s likely contribution to each of the categories. Examine each account, analyze the potential, consider your situation, and determine a realistic goal. Go on to the next account, and do the same. Then compile each of the numbers from the specific accounts, and presto! You have an annual number.
Let’s go through this process for a few accounts in our sample territory. As you begin your planning session, you have all your account folders filed alphabetically, so you begin with the first, AAA Industrial. This account is expanding its facility, and will need to add two machines. You may be able to get them to upgrade one or two of their older units at the same time. The competition isn’t very active in this account, and you expect to get the equipment business as well as all the supplies that go along with it. That means three new machine sales of about $60,000, supplies of about $20,000 and no new Superscrubbers—this account is quite happy with the current technology.
On to the next account—Alalema Public Schools. Here, they are talking about replacing some of their older machines. But they have a new director of maintenance, whom you haven’t met. Their supplies are awarded on an annual bid, and you don’t have that business because the competition underbid you. You think it’s going to take some work to get a new machine or two out of this account, so you add one machine at $20,000 to your list, no Superscrubbers, and no supplies. On to the next account.
And so it goes. You methodically review each account, think about it in detail, develop a realistic goal for each, and then compile those numbers for your annual goal.
Back to the example. Let’s say we’ve done this, and come up with a set of annual goals that looks like this:
1. Total sales = $1,765,000.
2. Total number of cleaning machines = 62.
3. Total number of Superscrubbers = 16.
4. Number of new accounts = 10.
5. Total sales of supplies = $1,000,000.
You’re still not finished. Now, you need to work those out on a quarterly or monthly basis. In our example, we’ve elected to use quarterly numbers. So, our final goal-setting exercise ends up looking like this:
2. A well-defined ABC analysis of your customers and prospects.
This is an issue we’ll describe in detail in the next chapter.
3. Individual goals and strategic plans for each of your key (A) accounts.
If you are in the kind of selling position where you are attempting to sell more to certain key accounts, then you need to create specific, monthly strategic plans for each of those key accounts. When we consider the fourth management secret, we’ll discuss in detail the concept of identifying your highest potential accounts and then investing more time in these “A” accounts and less time in the others. For now, let’s assume that you have prioritized your accounts and that you have a list of your “A” accounts.
In the typical sales territory, around 50 to 80 percent of your business is going to come from this group of accounts. That means that these accounts warrant special attention, special preparation, and special thought. You ought to apply the disciplines we have already discussed to your “A” accounts. In other words, create annual sales goals for each “A” account, create annual strategic plans for each, review progress on each account in your quarterly reviews, and develop specific monthly plans for each “A” account.
Quarterly planning sessions
Once a quarter, discipline yourself to dedicate planning time in a mini-planning retreat. All the rules and guidelines from the annual retreat apply to this, only the duration under consideration is shorter and not nearly as intense. So, lock yourself up in some secluded place, and focus on the task at hand.
Your purpose is to revise and fine-tune the decisions and plans you made in the annual planning retreat. So you review each of your goals, and the progress you have made in each of your “A” accounts, and you refine and revise your plans.
Monthly planning sessions
Create a master plan every month. This is your basic operational document. In it, you consolidate all your plans, pull them together, and make them very specific. This document, two to three pages in length, contains your monthly goals, your key account goals, your learning plan, a basic strategic plan for how you are going to accomplish your goals, and a weekly territory plan. See the Tool Kit for examples of different formats for monthly plans.
Weekly plans
At the end of every week, take 30–60 minutes to organize the next week, to review where you are going, to fold in anything that didn’t get done the previous week, and to gather the supplies, samples, and folders you’ll need.
Daily plans
At the end of every business day, set aside 30 minutes or so to prepare for the next day. Put your plan together, and gather everything you need for the next day. By doing this at the end of the previous day instead of the morning of the next day, you clear your mind to enjoy the balance of the day with your family and friends, and you enable yourself to start off energetically in the morning.
Pre-call review
Spend a few minutes in the car before you go in to see your customer for every sales call. If you are working on the phone, take a moment or two to prepare yourself for the phone call. Ask yourself several questions:
Why am I here?
What value am I bringing the customer in this call?
What do I want to accomplish?
How am I going to do that?
Do I have all the materials I’ll need?
You may even want to close your eyes and see the sales call happen in your imagination. Imagine yourself talking, and your customer doing likewise. See the sales call successfully unfolding, like you were watching a movie. This technique, called imaging, plants ideas in your subconscious, and is a way to quickly and subtly “practice” a sales call. Get good at this thinking process and you’ll see a major improvement in the quality of your sales calls.
Post-call reflection
I’m probably stretching this management secret a bit by including this particular thinking process. The management secret is think about it before you do it, and this process requires you to think about it after you do it. However, because the purpose of thinking about it “after” you do it is to make changes before you do it again, this post-call reflection fits.
One of the best times to make changes and improve your results is just after you’ve made a sales call. This is another discipline of the best salespeople. Set aside a few moments after your sales call, and think about it. Ask yourself several questions:
What went well?
What did I do to make that happen?
What went poorly?
What could I have done differently to get better results?
What should I do differently next time?
Do this every day, and it won’t be long before you’ll begin to notice significant improvements in the quality of your sales calls.
Smart time managers understand the power of planning. They know that they are always more effective if they think about it before they do it. And they know that the discipline of regular planning time (20 percent of their average workweek) will bring results far in excess of the time spent planning.
To implement this management secret:
1. Right now, before you forget, open your planner or electronic calendar, and schedule the planning times discussed in the chapter.
An annual planning retreat of one to three days.
Quarterly planning sessions of one-half to one day.
Monthly planning sessions of approximately one-half day.
Weekly plans.
2. Every day for the next three weeks, focus on ending the day by planning and preparing for the next day. By then, it should have become a habit that you will do instinctively.
3. Do the same with pre- and post-call planning. Make a commitment right now to invest a few minutes before and after every call to thinking about it.