Last week I wrote extensively about the importance of tracking your sales to maximize your sales and marketing budget. But if you’re a salesperson or professional, you also need to track your time.
Your time is even more valuable than your money. (You can always make more money. You can’t make more time.) So it’s critical to invest your time in efforts that will produce the biggest return for you.
Look at the activities you spend your time on. Which activities are most beneficial at producing leads and sales? You’ll likely find that several activities contributed to specific sales. That’s fine. What you’re looking for is patterns: what should you spend more time on and what should you spend less—or no—time on?
You don’t necessarily need to keep a time log, although that can be very helpful in maximizing the use of your time. Just look at your sales and figure out which efforts spawned them.
Keep in mind that some things you spend time on—like reading, training and relaxing—can’t be directly linked to specific sales. That doesn’t mean they’re not important. (On the contrary, I would argue reading, training and relaxing are all vital to your sales success.) So don’t cut them out of your schedule just because there isn’t an obvious causal connection. The same goes for activities like networking, exercising and spending time with your family. All provide you with valuable—if unquantifiable—dividends.
The great thing is that when you track your sales efforts against your results, you’ll be able to plan your time more effectively. That will insure you spend your time on activities that generate the most sales and enable you to make time for everything else that’s also important in your life.
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