Part 7 - Mastering Time Management: Boost Your Sales Team's Productivity

Part 7: Effective Time Management for Sales Managers

For a Sales manager, time management is crucial for balancing the demands of your role. Your role will involve from managing your team to achieving sales targets by visiting clients, handling administrative tasks, planning for the next month/qtr. Managing your time effectively will mean higher productivity, more in less and reduced levels of stress. We will find how you can master your time, juggle between tasks and boost efficiencies and throughput.

?Prioritizing Tasks

The basic of managing time starts by listing out the tasks and numbering them out in order of priority. Allocate time to tasks which are non-negotiable like team reviews, market visits, OJT for new joiners etc. A clear mental map of what is important, urgent and not skippable will help you know where to start working from. Here are some tools or ways to manage tasks

• Eisenhower Matrix: You would have heard of this 4 quadrant rule, a 2 x 2 matrix of urgent and important tasks: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither. Easier said than done, once you have learnt to categories into these 4 quadrants, it battle half won. Now start focussing
• Daily To-Do List: No, I am not talking about a mental list of actions to be taken, While Urgent x important matrix is done once a week or month, a daily daily to-do list with prioritized tasks helps keep your day in check. Ensure you spend time first on high-priority items at any given point of time to ensure they are out of the way.
• Delegate When Possible: are you someone who do not trust anyone else but yourself. Don’t try to do everything yourself. You need to find people in team to whom you can delegate tasks. Allow yourself some time to focus on more important tasks and think. A way to delegate is to create projects / task champions. It will also help groom your team and know what it is to handle cross functional tasks. On one had you can groom your team, you can also reduce your workload.

Managing Meetings

I have rarely found a manager or who does not hate meetings, especially when you are just a participant and not prime driver of the agenda. You cannot ignore all, but you can certainly manage your calendar well.

• Set Clear Agendas: ensure that when you get pulled into a meeting, it has a clear agenda and end goal. It helps you focused, prepare well and also know if you need to absolutely attend the meeting or you can delegate.
• Time Limits: Run every meeting like a tight ship. If you are indeed short on time, each overrun is going to cost some other tasks. Allocate time for meeting, question why do you need 60 min and why can’t it be 45 minutes. Keep a 5 min margin and do not allow meeting overrun, if needed schedule another one. Slowly you will find meetings being productive and to the point.
• Regular Stand-ups: You do not need detailed meeting on every subject or discussion. Standups are effective ways to get an update, take a quick call and move tot he next tasks. Schedule daily / weekly standups with your team. Again, clear agenda and sticking to time line helps in ensuring everyone is aligned in a very short period of time.

Utilizing Technology

Technology can play a big role in your success. If your organization has tech interventions use them to maximum, if not find out how you can use commonly available tools to help you out managing the team better

• CRM / Revenue reporting Systems: Using systems to track sales activities, customer interactions help in quick updates. You may have a quick look at data beforehand and take calls, instead of having somebody update it manually. Centralize the customer information as well as performance metrics, this ensures that the team looks at common information and is on the same page, saving time on data management and allowing more time for analytics.
• Project Management Tools: Tasks or projects can be daunting. If not managed well, they tend to get delayed impacting outcome and giving sub optimal ROI. Using tools to track tasks / projects help in keeping them ‘on time’ and makes sure that different parts fall in line at the right time.
• Automation: mundane repetitive tasks shall be automated as much as possible, Do you spend a lot of time in data entry from your team, try get information using google forms. Do you spend lot of time in getting right sales report, use excel effectively to generate report with few clicks. Invest in people to help you or invest in yourself to teach use of these tools and hacks. Either way you will end up saving loads of time in long run.

Time Blocking

Time blocking is an effective technique (I wrote about it in one of the linkedin AI articles) to manage multiple tasks or when you have different disjointed activities pulling you in different directions. It involves scheduling specific blocks of time for different tasks. This helps in maintaining focus and improving productivity.

• Dedicated Work Periods: Allocate blocks of time for deep work, such as strategizing, planning, or analyzing data. Ensure these periods are free from interruptions.
• Breaks and Downtime: Schedule regular breaks to avoid burnout. Short breaks between tasks can improve overall productivity and maintain energy levels throughout the day.
• Buffer Time: Include buffer time between meetings and tasks. This allows you to handle unexpected issues without disrupting your schedule.

Avoiding Multitasking

This is a bit controversial; some may agree and yet some may not. Multitasking is something which many swear by, but it has tendency to make mistakes and reduce productivity. This is something which every manager needs to invest in and master up and not easy for everyone to even start up with. Till you have mastered the art of jumping between unrelated topics, follow this

• Single-Task Focus: pick one task, block time for the same and finish that task, It will help you improve quality and efficiency of your efforts. It will also help you reduce likelihood of errors, and will make sure tasks get completed in relatively short span of time. You may call this as an effective meeting with your own self, remember the earlier part where we discussed how to have effective meeting
• Limit Distractions: When you are in a effective personal meeting, ensure nothing else disturbs you. Calls, emails, chats etc. can wait for that short period of time. Effectively create a cocoon around you for the blocked period, set boundaries for when you can be interrupted.

Each day is a new learning

The way you review your team, you need to review yourself against your time management goals. Learn from your mistakes the previous day and try change your behavior today. Adjust something everyday to make the next day better.

• Weekly Reviews: Do a weekly review of your schedule and productivity. Identify what worked well and where improvements can be made.
• Training and Development: Invest in time management training and resources. Books, courses, and workshops can provide new techniques and perspectives.

Endgame

• Prioritize Tasks: Use tools like the Eisenhower Matrix and daily to-do lists.
• Efficient Meetings: Set clear agendas, limit time, and use stand-up meetings.
• Leverage Technology: Utilize CRM systems, project management tools, and automation.
• Time Blocking: Schedule dedicated work periods, breaks, and buffer time.
• Avoid Multitasking: Focus on single tasks and limit distractions.
• Learn Everyday: Conduct weekly reviews, seek feedback, and invest in training.