If you use that time to educate yourself, you can become one of the most knowledgeable and highest paid sales people in America, just by listening to audio programs.
7. Use a Time Planner
Use a time planner of some kind and write down every appointment and activity. Let your time planner be your control center for your sale activities.
Use it as a tickler file to remind you when to get back to your prospects.
Purchase a time planner that enables you to store contacts, lets you plan a month in advance, and a year in advance, and enables you to run your sales business from one place.
Once you have a time planner, use it religiously. Write down everything.
Plan every single activity in advance. Keep accurate notes of every telephone conversation and presentation. The power is always on the side of the person with the best notes.
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Start and end each day by reviewing the information that you record in your time planner. Make your time planner into your mobile office.
The Only Thing You Have to Sell
Remember, all that the salesperson has to sell is his time. And the only time you are working is when you are face-to-face with a prospect. Learn and practice these time management techniques over and over until they become second nature. Good time management skills are the perfect vehicle to get you from where you are to where you want to be. They, more than anything else, will assure your success in sales.
“New knowledge is of little value if it doesn’t change us, make us better individuals, and help us to be more productive, happy and useful.” (Hyrum Smith)
Action Exercises:
1. Take charge of your sales career today; resolve to double the amount of time you spend face to face with prospects and customers.
2. Set clear sales and income goals for yourself, broken down by year, month, week, day and hour.
3. Only do work that pays you the amount you want and need to earn every hour; delegate, defer and eliminate everything else.
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4. Plan the activities of prospecting, presenting and following up that you will need to engage in to achieve your sales and income goals; discipline yourself to work on them all day, every day.
5. Prepare thoroughly for every sales call; do your homework on the prospect and have everything you need to make a successful sale.
6. Reduce traveling time by organizing your sales territory in advance; don’t waste time driving all over the city to see people.
7. Work all the time you work; don’t waste time in coffee breaks and lunches. Spend the time working instead.
Chapter Twelve
The Philosophy of Time Management
“It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good too, to make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.”
(George Horace Lorimer)
To be fully rounded as a person, you need a philosophy of time management.
You require a worldview that recognizes time as the one invaluable, indispensable, irreplaceable ingredient of a successful, happy, highly productive life. You need an attitude toward time as something more than the clock or the calendar.
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How do you go about developing a philosophy of time management? First of all, you take the long view. Look as far into the future as you can. All truly successful people are those who have long time horizons.
Sociologist Dr. Edward Banfield at Harvard University wrote a ground-breaking book in 1965 called The Unheavenly City. In this book, he explains the results of his many years of research into the reasons for upward social and economic mobility in our society, and in other societies.
The Best Predictor of Success
His research was devoted to uncovering the reasons for financial success, and the predictors of social class in America. He wanted to know what behaviors would most likely lead to increases in wealth from one generation to another. As part of his work, he studied factors such as education, intelligence, family background, race, occupation and other personal attributes. He found that none of these were accurate predictors of upward social mobility.
There were many people who ranked highly in one or more of these factors but they still failed to move up during the course of their working lifetimes.
Many of them actually experienced downward social mobility. They ended up earning less than their parents did at the same ages, and sometimes considerably less.
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Dr. Banfield finally concluded that there was only one factor that could accurately predict whether or not you were going to move upward and onward financially and socially. He called it “time perspective.” He defined time perspective as the period of time that you take into consideration when making your day to day decisions, and planning your life.
Think Into the Future
He found that successful people were those who had a long time perspective.
They planned their lives in terms of five, ten and even twenty years into the future. They evaluated and determined their choices and actions in the present in terms of how those choices might effect them in the distant future, and the consequences that might occur as a result of what they did right now.
As an example of long time perspective, it is traditional among the British upper classes to register their children at Oxford or Cambridge as soon as they are born, even though they won’t be attending for eighteen to twenty years. They fill out the applications and go through the registration process for their children exactly as if they were going to attend in the next semester.
In America, many parents open a college savings account for their children as soon as they are born. They then add to this account regularly for many years to assure that their children can get the very best education possible when they grow up. These are examples of long time perspective.
The Common Attitude of Achievement
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This attitude of taking the long view seems to be common among most men and women who achieve greatly in the course of their lifetimes. The longer your sense of time perspective, the more likely it is that you will do the sort of things, and make the kind of sacrifices in the short term, that will lead to greater success in the long term. Your thoughtfulness about time today will tend to increase your income and your social standing in the future.
The reverse is also true. As you move down the socio-economic latter, the time perspective at each level becomes shorter. When you arrive at the very bottom of the social pyramid, to the hopeless alcoholic or drug addict, you find a time perspective of less than an hour, the time it takes to get one shot or one drink. Often the time perspective of the person at the bottom of society is only a few minutes. They do not think beyond the moment.
The average hourly worker has a time perspective of about two pay periods.
The salaried worker has a time perspective of about two months. As you proceed up the socio-economic ladder, the time perspective lengthens until you reach the most respected people in society, such as the family doctor.
The Most Respected Profession
In every study asking people who they consider to be the most respected people in society, the family doctor ranks at the top. More people look up to and respect the family doctor than any other professional occupation in our society. Why is this? It is probably because we recognize that he or she has spent eight, ten or even twelve years of study, internship, residency, and practice to reach the point where he or she can become our doctor.
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The average doctor in America earns $132,000.00 per year. He will enjoy high earnings and higher social standing for his entire life. He will have complete job security. His children will have advantages not enjoyed by most other children. But the average doctor has spent almost twelve years of hard work and sacrifice preparing him or herself to earn that kind of money, and achieve that level of social status. This is an example of long time perspective that most people recognize and admire.
Long Time Perspective Predicts Social Class
Many immigrants arrive in America with no money and no language skills.
They then go to work at menial jobs, doing whatever they can to support themselves. But even at low levels of income, they often save their money so that their children can get a good education and have a chance at the American dream. Even though they are poor, these are people with real class. They have long time perspective.
In a way, these people starting at the bottom have better characters then people who have had all the benefits of an American upbringing, but who spend every single penny they can get their hands on with little thought for the future. Their willingness to sacrifice in the short term so they can have better futures demonstrates the qualities of vision, courage, self-discipline and persistence. They have real class, even though they have little money.