How the Best Sales Reps Manage Their Time

There are things you simply cannot control in sales.

You can’t control volatile markets, the economy, the competition, unpredictable territories, product releases, and elusive customers who change their minds. 

But there’s one thing you have full control over – your time. And the good news is, how you spend your time will have the biggest effect on if you hit your quota. 

How do you make the most out of your time? Here are the essential areas to focus on.

Let’s start with a startling stat – most salespeople only spend a fraction of the day selling.

In an 8-hour day, do you know how much time a typical rep spends actively selling?

Ninety minutes, according to the latest research.

That said, there are many non-selling activities that must be completed like:

• Responding to email.
• Talking with a field partner or vendor.
• Entering notes into the CRM.
• Researching questions.
• Building a new spreadsheet.
• Writing proposals
• Creating sales reports
• Even sharpening your skills, which is one of the most valuable ways a salesperson can spend their time.

The key is ensuring you still are dedicating a good portion of your day to actually selling. 

How can you focus more on selling? Calendar it.

I’ve found that blocking time on your calendar is the key to creating a proactive selling space. Which is why I strongly recommend all reps block non-negotiable “power hours” three times a week where you focus solely on prospecting. 

Here are the rules I encourage reps to follow, when scheduling these power hours: 

• First off, despite the name, I recommend scheduling them for 90 minutes, not an hour. Ninety minutes is the magical number you can pay attention to any single task, without having to take a break.
• Choose a time that works for your prospects. What time are your prospects most likely to be available? Schedule it then.
• ‘Non-negotiable’ means exactly that: you must do it. Learn to say “no” tactfully to requests and interruptions such as meetings, calls from their vendor partners, or last-minute requests.
• Prepare everything – your CRM, scripts, job aids, email templates, whatever – ahead of these power hours. This time isn’t about looking busy, it’s about true, nose-to-the-ground prospecting.
• Announce this time and tell everyone about it, to ensure you do not get off-track. Soon, who knows – others might follow suit.

If you stick to this at least three times per week, you will see results within a month.

Proactively and strategically planning your territory is key.

Prospecting is a numbers game. The more prospecting you do, the bigger pipeline you’ll have.

That said, the ideal rep prospects effectively by identifying the right targets. That makes strategically planning your territory equally important.

I recommend designing a quarterly territory plan that you revisit and refine often. What should this plan include?

Things like: 

• The top 25 accounts in your territory. Who are the people you most want to connect with?
• A territory summary and overview. What macro trends are affecting your territory?
• Trends and early adopters. What target customers are early adopters of your solution?
• Competitive profile and market share. What does the competitive landscape look like in your territory? Are you prepared to respond?
• A basic SWOT analysis. Make an analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and where you might be blindsided. You should do this for yourself as well, writing out your own personal strengths and weaknesses, to guide your development.

A daily tactical plan keeps you focused. Here’s what your day can look like.

And then, there is your tactical plan. Unlike your strategic plan, which focuses on who you sell to, your tactical plan focuses on what you need to do to make quota.

For example, let’s say you start meaningful conversations with 15% of the people you InMail on LinkedIn. From those meaningful conversations, you close 20%, and your average deal size is $10,000 within three months.

That means, for every 100 InMails you send, you will close $30,000 in business within three months. If your quota is $90,000 for the quarter, it means you must send 300 InMails. 

That’s a bit simplistic, but you get the idea. The point is to break down all the actions required to hit your number, broken down to the week or day.

Here’s a nuanced example of a tactical plan:

• 75 outbound calls per day
• 5 high-level, meaningful conversations per day
• 50 new e-mail introductions per day
• 5 demo/web presentations per week
• 5 new partner calls per week
• 3 conference calls per week
• 3 new quotes/proposals per week

The point is, if you can get really crisp on your numbers, you can begin to forecast better. Not only will that give you more peace of mind, it’ll also make you a much more consistent seller, which is what sales leaders are most looking for.

One word to the wise on these tactical plans – be conservative in your equations and round down. That way, your baseline is your quota. And, if everything goes right, well, tell the family to pack their bags for Bali.

In my experience, good reps do one of these things. The best reps do all three.

I’ve met reps who are real go-getters, and they can smile-and-dial all day long. They might not even know who they are hunting, but they hunt so relentlessly, they hit their numbers that way.

This is great, but these reps generally aren’t great forecasters and aren’t as strategic with their time as they could be. For that reason, they are valuable, but often not promotable and tend to boom-and-bust.

Conversely, I’ve seen other reps who are master planners. They can tell you everything about their territory, the market conditions, your own product, the latest trends, on and on. They know when to cut their losses on low-potential prospects.

But they don’t pick up the phone and call. This can be so frustrating because while they have all of this great information in their head, they don’t execute.

The best reps make a commitment to try something new every day to improve the use of their time. They are relentless, showing the grit that it takes to be a great salesperson. But they also have a clear picture of their territory and have a strategic view of the business and their sales tools. 

And they really understand what it takes to hit their number, and therefore are highly reliable.

Those are the reps who ultimately have long, successful careers, and move up to management if they so choose. You can become one of those reps – it really starts with getting control of your time.

Are you looking to become a better rep? Check out my new LinkedIn Learning course, Inside Sales.