Time Management

An Essential Sales Warrior's Survival Guide

Dave Kahle

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781601635044
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Time Management

The life of a 21st-century salesperson is a battle…with an overwhelming number of things to do, ever-rising expectations, and conflicting pressures. Customers are more sophisticated, more demanding, and harder to see then ever. Voice mail has made it necessary for many salespeople to spend an inordinate amount of time on the phone. Salespeople are being asked to collect more information about their customers, report in ever-more sophisticated ways, use more and more complex computer programs, and take part in more meetings than ever before.

Nugget 1
The Practice of Sales

Time management ultimately proceeds from a mindset. If we are going to become effective managers of our time, we need to start by brushing up our beliefs—specifically our beliefs about the job that we do.

“Every profession expects the serious practitioner of that profession to continually seek out the best practices of that profession, and then to roll them into his or her routine with discipline.” That statement comes out of my mouth in almost every seminar or keynote address that I present. Sometimes, I follow it up with the ironic observation that there is, apparently, one exception to that rule, and that is the profession of sales, where we don’t expect anyone to improve.

That is, of course, nonsense. The truth is that better salespeople produce better results. The best salespeople produce the best results. And better salespeople continually imbed best practices into their habits. That’s how they become better. They practice.

I just got off the phone with one of my clients. We were discussing the deplorable state of the market in his industry, which is down about 35 percent from two years ago. Yet, he observed that four of his 12 salespeople were having record years.

“It’s easy to do well when the market is growing,” he observed. “Most salespeople don’t know what they did to gain business when the market was growing, and they don’t know what to do when the market is shrinking. The good salespeople, though, know how to sell. And that brings them results.”

Good salespeople sell more than mediocre salespeople. That is such a blatantly obvious truth that I’m embarrassed to even mention it. And how salespeople get good is just like how every other professional becomes good—they practice!

Good doctors practice their craft and continually improve. So do good social workers, teachers, accountants, and lawyers. Ditto for ministers, nurses, airline pilots, chefs, and executives. The list goes on and on. No reasonably mature person thinks that after just a year on the job they know it all. On the contrary, they expect to learn, grow, and improve for the balance of their careers.

According to the Encarta Dictionary, the word practice means “repetition in order to improve; process of carrying out an idea; work of a professional person; and usual pattern of action.” All of these accurately describe the behavior that separates the good salesperson from the mediocre. Let’s expand on each of these definitions:

1. Repetition in order to improve. A good salesperson studies the best practices of his profession, and repeats them in order to improve. This expresses itself in such activities as learning to ask a series of good questions, or implementing some time management disciplines. You work at it and repeat it until it becomes a habit, and you have improved. Or, you create a memorized 30-second introduction to your company. You repeat it until you have it down perfectly and it comes out of your mouth smoothly and persuasively. Another good idea is to practice a presentation for a key product or service. Repeat it until you are confident and competent. It’s just like golf, tennis, or any area of human endeavor. If you are going to become good at it, you must practice.

2. Process of carrying out an idea. The good salesperson is continually on the lookout for good ideas. He collects them, sorts through them, prioritizes them, and then implements them. For example, he may come across the idea of prioritizing his accounts based on the potential for business in those accounts. That’s a different idea than the typical sorting by the amount of business they did in the past. It is, for some, a new idea. The good salesperson takes that idea, works it out, applies it to his territory, and then focuses on the high-potential accounts. As a result, his production improves, and he becomes more effective. Then he looks for the next good idea. That’s practice.

3. Work of a professional person. The best salespeople view their work as a profession. They understand that sales is a challenging, demanding job that is critical for the success of every business. They also understand that it typically takes years to become adept at it, and that it is so sophisticated and challenging, that they must learn and improve forever. They also understand that their work is crucial for the success of their employer and that at least four or five families are employed as a result of every salesperson’s efforts. That’s a profession. And those who are a part of a profession practice it.

4. Usual pattern of action. Sales is an action-based profession. In other words, it is our actions that cause reactions in the customer. They don’t send us a purchase order, and then we go see them. We see them first, and it is what we do that causes them to react. If we act effectively, we gain the business. If we don’t act effectively, we don’t gain the business.

Our success is less about the product and service and company that we represent and more about the actions we take. And a pattern of action is a sequence of actions that are repeated. Through time, good salespeople understand the most effective actions they can take; they put them together into patterns and repeat them until they cause more effective customer reactions.

When a salesperson has turned an action into a pattern, and by repetition turned the pattern into a habit, and then by discipline and thoughtfulness continually exercises that habit, he or she has become an excellent salesperson. It’s what you do that counts, and good salespeople practice until they get it right.

Nugget 2
The Hidden Path to Sales Success

In my 20-plus years of educating, I have encountered tens of thousands of salespeople. The vast majority of them want to do better. They want the benefits of greater success: increased income, greater respect from their peers and managers, and increased self-confidence.

Yet, the vast majority of them remain at a level best described as “ordinary.” They never make the transition to being a true master of their craft. In spite of their desire to excel, few do. The reason, for the overwhelming majority of salespeople, is that they take the wrong path to sales success.

Let me illustrate: I have had these kinds of conversations in almost every training session I have done: A salesperson is concerned about an issue in one of his accounts. It could be that he can’t unseat the competition, that he’s at risk of losing the business, that he can’t gain an audience with the right people, or that he’s constantly asked to reduce his price. However, although the specifics vary, they almost always revolve around the same themes.

There is a problem in an account. Someone won’t do what the salesperson wants. The question, in one form or another, is always, “How do I get them to do what I want them to do?” The focus is always on the account, the other people, and the things outside of the salesperson that he or she wants to influence.

In these encounters, I don’t think I have ever had a salesperson ask me, “How can I change myself in such a way as to impact this situation?” And therein lies the problem.

As salespeople, we almost exclusively focus on those things that exist outside of ourselves: the prospects, the customers, the politics, the products, the price, and so on. We focus on the externals. As long as we do that, we will be forever stymied in our desire to become exceptional performers.

We will never reach our potential until we begin to focus on changing and improving ourselves. The hidden path to sales success is the “path less traveled,” the path that traverses the bumpy geography of self-growth and self-improvement—the inward path. When we focus on self-growth and self-improvement, those changes that we make in ourselves naturally ooze out of us and impact the people and the world around us. To improve your results, improve yourself.

Here’s an example: A salesperson has been trying to penetrate an account in which he had some business, but was a minor player. One or two other competitors dominated the account. He had difficulty even getting an opportunity to present his solutions. He saw his problem as external (the politics, processes, and personalities in this account).

I talked with him about his ability to nurture professional business relationships, to uncover hidden concerns and obstacles via effective questioning, and to empathize with the key decision-makers. In other words, my conversation was about his competencies (internal) instead of the account’s specifics (externals). If he could improve himself to the point where he was more competent at these sales fundamentals, he would be more effective in that account and the problems he expressed would gradually decrease.

He saw the problem as existing outside of himself (external). I saw the solution coming as a result of improving himself (internal).

As I reflect on the thousands of these kinds of conversations that I have had with salespeople and sales leaders, I have concluded that the conversations almost always follow that pattern. They present an external problem, and I reply with an internal solution.

The obvious question pops to the surface: Kahle, is it you? Am I so far outside of the mainstream of reality that I am misleading the people I’m supposed to be helping?

Honestly, I don’t think so. The concept of reaching your fullest potential, of making your greatest mark on this world, by focusing internally instead of externally, is a position that all of the world’s greatest thinkers, from King Solomon thousands of years ago, to Mahatma Gandhi in more modern times, have espoused. That concept lies at the heart of the world’s greatest religions, a key part of the worldview of Jesus Christ and Buddha.

I’ll often share this quote from James Allen in my semi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Disclaimer
• Introduction: The Need for Sales Time Management
• Nugget 1: The Practice of Sales
• Nugget 2: The Hidden Path to Sales Success
• Nugget 3: Avoid the Biggest Time-Wasters for Salespeople
• Nugget 4: Creating Long-Term Goals
• Nugget 5: Fundamentals of Key Account Selling
• Nugget 6: Developing Account Strategies
• Nugget 7: On Preparation and Presentations
• Nugget 8: Learning from Failure
• Nugget 9: The Power Is In the Process
• Nugget 10: A Compendium of Best Practices
• Index
• About the Author
• Other Resources