Professional Selling Skills Training: Tracking Your Sales Time

Fortune Magazine (Oct. 16 edition) has a great interview with Jim Donald, CEO of Starbucks. In the article, Jim talks about how he charts his time by month to determine how he is spending it. I've been talking about this for years...for sales people to truly perform at the highest level, it's important to measure how your time is spent. Now I feel vindicated! When a CEO of a high-profile company advocates doing it, you know it makes sense. If you haven't read the article or read some of my material, here's what you need to do: Track your time by key activity for an entire month. The objective is not to determine the total hours, but the % of time you spend on an activity. In the case of sales, the activities need to be sales-focused, not administration, meetings, or anything that isn't truly helping you either keep a sale or make a new one.

Sales Training Tip #152: Mail As A Sales Tool

Mailing your customer or prospect a letter is still a viable means of sharing information and often it will get more “eyeball” time than an email will. The downside to sending stuff this way is that it may take the reader a week to see it because of the infrequency with which many people actually read their mail.