Take Control of Time

Following on from my previous article, if all you're selling is time, what does your calendar look like?

• ?When do you do your admin?
• ?When do you meet with clients?
• ?When do you prospect for new opportunities?

Does your calendar say that?

?Has it ever happened that a client wants to meet you and you need to cancel your prospecting, your 121 with your manager, or not attend your team meeting? Those things aren't important though are they?

What would happen if you planned your calendar for what success looks like? Where would you put the client meetings? It wouldn't make sense to put your frogs (admin, emails, planning and prep) at the beginning of the day and the things you enjoy in the afternoon would it?

But how does that work? Your client might not be available in the slots you allocate. There's nothing to say you can't swap things around. The important word here is "swap", not cancel or remove. However, i've found that clients find it more professional for me to say "I can do Thursday at 2pm, or Monday at 3pm" rather than "errrrm, when can you do?". Perhaps that's never happened to you though.

I find that planning for success makes success more likely. My objective is to have two discovery meetings and one proposal meeting a week. It is very clear to me whether I will achieve that if I put them in my diary, ready to happen. I book the meetings. If I don't, then I know I need to increase the time I spend prospecting for opportunities. I adapt my diary for next week to achieve success. There is no "smoking hopium" about my approach: it is deliberate, measurable and adaptable.

When an email comes in that I haven't allocated time to attend to, I can schedule it into my calendar and let the emailer know when I will get back to them. I remove the risk of forgetting and I can take charge of my priorities.

All of the steps to success

Have you ever written down all the steps to take an opportunity through from initial discussion to signature, then delivery, and then ongoing support?

Where in your process do you explain the process to the client so they understand what we're all working to?

How many conversations have you had where the prospect says "we'll make a decision in October and then we'll want it live in two weeks" but they don't realise that there is a 4 week process after they sign before delivery?

How many times have you been approaching the point that you thought the contract would be signed and the client announces that they want a demo or proof of concept? Were they always aware of this?

These aren't conversations that would be worth having upfront with the prospect in the interest of eliminating delays, would they?

It wouldn't be helpful for the client to whiteboard the timelines with you, including your and their responsibilities along that timeline would it? Where does this sit in your process? Would it sit in the initial discovery phase?

"If we were to go ahead with this, when would it need to be live?"

"So when would you want to select who you'd be going ahead with?"

"Who will be involved in that?"

"How does that decision happen?"

"Who will need to review our terms of business? How long would they need?"

?And through all of these questions (and more) you're writing these up along a timeline that runs from left (now) to right (deadline date).

"Is there anything we've missed from this?"

"It wouldn't help for me to write in some markers that we would need to hit to support this timeline would it?"

Add in things like "send contract", "receive signed contract", "receive Purchase Order", "send first invoice", "receive payment", "deploy service", "run testing", "handover", "receive handover confirmation".... Etc etc

Buyers are unlikely to have planned how they will buy what you're selling. Often, very large and important purchases happen once every three to five years. Buyers don't know how their companies buy because they might not have been around last time.

Help them demystify their own process and you'll achieve two things:

1. Consultant status rather than salesperson
2. Permission to point out to the client that we won't be able to hit their timelines when they run late. You will never chase again.

Taking the pressure off time

What can you run in parallel?

During this process, look out for opportunities to take things off the critical path. One regular opportunity are legal terms. Is there any reason that before you present a solution that their legal team couldn't review and confirm the terms of business we'd be operating under?

Would it have a commercial impact to the solution if your standard terms of business were to change? Would it alter the level of risk that you'd be taking? If the level of risk alters, does the upside of the opportunity need to change accordingly??

Time sinks

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There are certain things in life that are commercially designed to grab and retain our attention. There are other things that distract our flow even though they are supposed to be helpful tools.

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How often do email notifications distract you in meetings?

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You don't ever find yourself "doom scrolling" through social media feeds and losing time do you?

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One of my prospecting behaviours is to send messages and engage with posts of my clients on professional business social media applications like LinkedIn. However, I've found myself scrolling through unrelated content 20 minutes later. I've found the only way to guarantee avoiding this is to set myself a five minute timer to "wake me up" out of it if I slip into the vortex. Without this, my positive behaviours on the route to success can quickly become detractors that defeat me,

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Are there any emails that can't wait a couple of hours until your next allocated "inbox slot"? Are there any instant messages that can't wait 30 minutes until the end of your planning session?

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Can you be more effective by focussing for 25 minutes on a task, and then checking instant messages for 5? Would taking control of your time make you more successful? Would those around you accommodate this way of working if you communicated it, in the interest of the overall team's success?