A Different Look at Time Management

Average salespeople often spend their time foolishly doing unproductive busywork — and then they wonder where their days went, why they accomplished so little, and why they never seem to have time for the fun stuff they’d really like to do. The key word here is spend: They spent their time instead of investing it. And that makes all the difference.

The words spending and investing connote very different ideas. When you spend money, depending upon what it’s spent for, you may think of the loss of that money rather than the benefits you enjoy from what you got in exchange for it.

On the other hand, the word invest signifies a payment from which you will derive a return or a payoff of some type; you don’t focus on the momentary loss of money, but rather on the gain of the product or service that you will receive. Similarly, when you spend your time instead of investing it, you focus on lost time rather than on personal gain.

If you’ve never put a dollar value on your time before, do it now. To determine what your time is worth, use this simple equation:

Gross Income divided by Total Annual Working Hours = Hourly Rate

To help you see the value of this equation, suppose that your annual income is $40,000, and you work 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year (allowing 2 weeks off for vacation). That means that the value of each hour in your workweek is $20.

In straight-commission sales, if you spend just one hour each day of each workweek on unproductive activity, you spend about $5,000 a year on nothing. And that’s exactly what you have to show for your wasted time, too — nothing.

When you choose not to manage your time, you may end up wasting 12 percent of your annual income or more. And this amount doesn’t even account for all the future business you lost because you spent time instead of investing it.

If you’re a regular, full-time employee, that $5,000 is money your employer may as well drop off the roof for all the productivity she gets for it.

In sales or persuasion situations, you often don’t see immediate financial payoff from the time you invest. The selling business requires both patience and wise money management practices.

When I was selling real estate, for example, I invested my time in prospecting, demonstrating property, and getting agreements approved, but I saw no return until the transaction was completed and my broker had the check.

The final transaction commonly occurred weeks, and in some cases months, after my actual investment of time. During the period between my invested time and my financial reward, I sometimes lost sight of my goals — but that’s normal in selling.

The longer the period between selling and payoff, the harder it is to stay focused on investing your time wisely. When you invest time in the people you’re trying to persuade, thinking of the returns on your investment is normal. I don’t know of any new salesperson who doesn’t take out her calculator and figure the percentage she gets on a sale as soon as she’s out of sight of the client. After all, helping others is a career choice that pays very well when done correctly.

Copyright Tom Hopkins International, Inc.