Increase Sales by Improving Territory Time Management

“Tempus Fugit” ….. Time Flies - Lara Croft in Tomb Raider

Time is our most valuable resource in the selling process. Like the grains of sand, falling through an hourglass, once time is gone, you’ve lost the opportunity to invest it to close more new business.

Territory time management is one of the core skills that sales professionals must understand and master to maximize their success. This article will focus on helping sales professionals and sales leaders think about how to plan their limited available time to align with their financial targets. The goal is to provide them with a time management methodology and a simple planning tool to manage their territories. (This is NOT intended to be a CRM micro-management process)

A sales professional’s main goal and motivation should be to sell as much as possible to maximize their bonus. Developing a sales execution plan to support hitting and exceeding their number is key to figuring out how to invest their limited time.

Sales leadership’s role is to help their sales team to develop a well-thought-out plan on how to best manage their time with customers. They don’t want a salesperson waking up on Monday morning without a plan for the week. This wastes time and slows the sales process in closing more new business.

Experienced and successful sales professionals have developed their own time management methodologies, which range from thoughts in their heads to more rigorous calendar task follow-ups. Sales leaders should continue challenging sellers to improve their planning efficiencies and strategies, so they take advantage of every hour of the day.

“Let’s start with the basics.”

The below template is a high-level starting point to calculate how many days per year a sale professional has available to call on customers. It’s surprising that many people are shocked how little time is left, after removing the days doing other things.

Example: High Level Territory Time Management View

The math is very straightforward:

• A year has 365 days; 12 months; 4 quarters and 52 weeks
• The starting assumption is that we don’t want to work weekends, which leaves 261 weekdays per year. (Obviously, we probably will work some weekends, but don’t want to plan it if possible)
• Subtract holidays and planned vacations, which most people want to enjoy. (Example: 10 holidays & 15 Vacation or PTO days)
• Subtract 1 office day per week for administrative tasks, planning, lead development, and follow-up. (Example: 52 days = 20% of weekdays; Used 1 office day per week, with the assumption sales professionals will start traveling again post COVID. This may change with more virtual calling if that is how the customer wants to be served)
• Subtract planned internal sales meetings, trade shows/conferences, and training/personal development. (Example: 24 days)

Once you remove all these days, there are only 160 days per year or 3.1 average days per week remaining to call on customers.

Encourage sales leaders to help their sales professionals think about the sales call planning strategy from a macro level. Start by having them develop a plan for the next month (30 days), then over time expand to the next quarter (90 days) and maybe for the full year.

Recommend including some flexibility in call planning to allow for unexpected changes in priorities. Examples may include:

• Uncovered a new business opportunity, which could add additional sales this year.
• A customer is having problems and needs additional attention.
• Supply chain disruptions require additional attention to existing customers for price increases or allocations.
• Customers need to change their appointments or delay meetings.

A good rule of thumb is to build your plan around the top priorities with 80% of your available time. The remaining 20% will be used to focus on changing opportunities and priorities. Utilizing this type of thought process will support keeping you on track with your plan to deliver these highest priority opportunities.

Once all of this is calculated the sales professional has ~128 days per year or ~2.5 average days per week available for planned customer calls.

This leads to the challenge: “How do I maximize this time?

As stated above, walking through this exercise often shocks and surprises sales professionals and leaders. However, it does drive home the point that our available time to plan sales calls is limited. In the big picture, it is to everyone’s advantage to develop strong plans on how to invest their precious resource of time.

Note: Obviously, this example will be different for every business. Despite working many long hours, weekends, holidays, and vacations to keep up; everyone can benefit with better utilization of their time. Remember time management planning is a dynamic activity, which will change and should be updated on a regular basis to adapt to changes.

Macro-Time Management Tool

One of my previous bosses, who was a chemical engineer introduced me to the concept of a simple time management tool, which can be utilized across all functions within an organization. I adapted it for sales call planning.

Going into a hopeful post-COVID world, where we expect to see a new balance of in-person and virtual sales calls/presentations, this tool can be used to plan the most significant customer interactions.

We will start with an example of a quarterly planning model.

Example: Quarterly Sales Planning Tool

The top part of the model remains the same with 160 available days for the full year and 44 days for Q1 to make customer calls.

• 80% = 35 days in Q1 = 2.5 average days per week for planned calls.
• 20% = 9 days in Q1 = 0.6 average days per week flexible/unplanned calls.
• Start by listing all the customers that you plan to call on to maintain and close new business to hit the territory number in the first column.
• Segment the customers by type, to prioritize how much time you plan to invest with each over the period to achieve your goals. (This example uses a rating of A, B, C, D type customers. A-customers are the highest and biggest priorities, who will get the most attention.  D customers are the smallest and get fewer calls)
• Set the total target sales calls in Q1 for each customer
• Then set how many calls will be planned for each month (Jan/Feb/Mar) by the customer and for how much time, including any travel time. (Examples: 1= Full Day; 0.5 = ? day (4 hours); 0.3 = 1/3 of a day)
• The spreadsheet should be set up to total the days per customer and the days per month & quarter vs available days. This will allow the sales professionals to plan all of their available days.

Developing this type of macro view of a territory and the planned customer calls, allows the sales professional and manager to see the plan on paper and look for opportunities to improve it.

• Does this call plan make sense?
• Does it support hitting my numbers?
• Does it focus the appropriate amount of time maintaining accounts versus hunting for new business?
• How should the 9 flexible days (3 days/month) be invested?

Utilizing this type of methodology also supports a good dialogue and creates coaching opportunities. It reinforces that the sales professional owns the territory to deliver their numbers. It should NOT be utilized as a micro-management tool.

The key for everyone to remember is that things will change, which will affect territory call planning. Sellers should review how they spent their time vs their call plan every month, then modify their future plans accordingly.  If they find that they are not calling enough on the customers needed to maintain and grow their territories, sellers can make the necessary course corrections to hit their numbers.

Time is our most valuable resource in the selling process. Helping sales professionals and sales leaders strengthen this core skill, supports maximizing their success and bonuses.

Remember “Time Flies!” Developing a strong time management plan to get the most out of every day, increases sales.

Below is an example of an annual macro-territory time management tool, which can be utilized for longer-term territory strategy if appropriate.

Example: Annual Sales Planning Tool