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Salescraft Training
Eliminating Stress with Disciplined Habits
Unlock the secrets to mastering sales prioritization and time management. Ever wondered how understanding your personal strengths and weaknesses could transform your business? This episode promises to guide you through the art of leveraging tools like the DISC profile to optimize your workflow. We'll help you navigate the challenges of juggling multiple responsibilities, ensuring you're focusing on the high-value tasks that drive success and sidestepping the pitfalls of procrastination. By the end, you'll have actionable strategies to maintain a healthy sales pipeline and manage stress effectively.
Join us as we take a deep dive into the power of self-awareness in the sales realm. Discover how a simple four-quadrant grid can revolutionize your task management by categorizing them based on urgency and importance. We'll also explore how understanding your personal preferences can boost both your business productivity and personal growth. With insights into disciplined habits and strategic task delegation, this episode equips you to enhance both your professional performance and overall life enjoyment. Say goodbye to last-minute chaos and hello to a balanced, profitable business operation.
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Graham Elliott
You can contact me at graham@salescraft.training
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Hello again. I want to talk about something that is really an issue for anybody doing sales, I would say, whether you're employed or not, and I think it's particularly a big issue if you are running your own business. So you have many, many things to do. It may well be that you're doing your own sales, but you're also producing product or solutions for your clients, you're having to manage advertising, you're maybe handling salaries Many, many things can be going on. So how do you handle all that?
Speaker 1:I'm going to really look at this, I guess, primarily from the perspective of the salesperson, but what I would say is, if you do have many, many things going on, I like to get disk profiles of the people I work with, and if you don't know what a disk profile is, it's basically one way of looking at the way you're wired. It is a personality profile, but I think people read too much into that. Essentially, disc takes the view that we are all composed of different levels of each of four particular aspects. One of them is the more kind of getting to the point getting things done aspect. Another one is the engaging with other people, how good you are socially, maybe a social butterfly, that kind of thing. The third one is how process-driven you are. So you might be very good at getting down into the details or, alternatively, you might be terrible at it. You know you might be able to do 20 minutes. Then you really have to go for a walk, which is more where I sit. And then the final one is just diving into more of the sort of technical details. So if you're really comfortable in the techie space, that probably means that that aspect of your personality is very high.
Speaker 1:Now in this podcast, I'm not going to talk about DISC and go through it. Now in this podcast, I'm not going to talk about DISC and go through it. If you are interested, certainly in my courses you can find out more about your DISC profile. You can also go to places like Tony Robbins online and you can get a profile there. But it is helpful because what I find is that when people start to get that insight into how they're wired and this is all that it is there's not a good profile or a bad profile or any of that kind of thing. It simply tells you how you're wired.
Speaker 1:So, for example, I'm very big picture. I'm quite good at connecting with other people, but I like to get things done. I see a target and I go for it, and that's the way I'm wired Things like doing my admin and my accounts and all that sort of thing. I really almost have to have a gun to my head to do that kind of stuff, and you might be the opposite. You might find that you're really comfortable doing process, but when it comes to the more pressured situations, that's something that you struggle with.
Speaker 1:So getting a DISC profile will certainly help you to get clarity on why you've struggled with certain aspects, and this doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. But I think it's important to understand where your strengths and your weaknesses are, because if you're weak in an area and it's possible to put that particular work so for me it might be doing my admin, might be doing my accounts. If it's possible to have somebody else who is much more aligned with that kind of work to do that for you, that is a real benefit, because as a salesperson, as maybe a business owner, you really do need to know where your strengths are, because they're the things that you'll do well. The other things you're likely to struggle with and you're just going to burn a lot of time and a lot of money that could be better spent elsewhere. So I'm not going to say any more about this other than the purpose of this podcast is to just look at how you manage your priorities. And I would say the very first thing to do is to look at where you're strong and where you're weak. So which activities that have to be done every day or every week or every month or every quarter, which of those are you good at, and which of those are you good at, and which of those are you efficient at? And of the ones you're not, is there the option to have somebody else who is better suited pick that up for you? So that's point number one.
Speaker 1:Okay, so managing priorities. I'm going to focus much more on the sales side now, because there are aspects of sales such as admin, such as telephone calls, such as meetings, maybe putting proposals together. So for any one of us, we're likely to be juggling many things that we have to do. So how do you organize your priorities? Now? You might be somebody who is very good at this, and I might be somebody who is very good at this, and I certainly know people who are very good at this, but equally, I've come across certainly salespeople when I've been a sales manager who really aren't that good at all at doing this. They kind of there are bits they like doing. They want to do the meetings with customers, or they want to do the proposals, but the other stuff they'll tend to keep putting off. To do the proposals, but the other stuff they'll tend to keep putting off. And then what will happen is they're not servicing the different steps of the sales process adequately and that means they will fail At some point. They're going to run out of meetings or they've just spent two weeks on a proposal, but when they've done that, okay, what's in the pipeline? And a lot of opportunities have just disappeared because they weren't being handled in time in a timely fashion that kept the opportunity alive.
Speaker 1:So the first thing to look at is to understand what are your high value activities and what are your low value activities. So the first part of that is simply to understand which activities are delivering more to your bottom line, to your profitability, to making your business viable, than other activities that actually deliver very little. And the difficulty with this is that it can often be that the things we like doing are the things that really, when you step back from it are the low value activities, and part of this can be driven, as I've said, by the kind of personality you have, how you're wired and how most of us simply prioritize things, because there are certain things we like doing but we're more comfortable doing than the other things we really don't like doing, and we'll tend to spend less time on those activities we don't like, but they could be the really critical activities that make the difference. So that's the first step. I would suggest a bit of planning time. Whenever you have planning time, but just grab a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, whatever it is, and probably time it. Give yourself 20 minutes and maybe even set a timer on your phone, maybe just a 20 minute alarm after 20 minutes, but don't do anything else, don't accept phone calls, don't look at emails, don't look at text messages, but just sit down and, for those 20 minutes, focus on what are the activities you have to get done, let's say, on a weekly basis, maybe on a monthly, depending how your activities shape up, and against each one of those, just maybe score it out of five or 10, whatever you have, maybe five, five actually, because some people will start creating too many increments so what you really want to do, though, is to very quickly identify which are the high value activities, which activities are really important because they deliver to the profitability of your business, or your sales activity will contribute to you getting those sales across the line, and which are the low-value activities that could be put off. They're not urgent or even somebody else could do for you, if that's a possibility in your situation.
Speaker 1:And then another way of if you're still struggling with setting priorities, another way of approaching it is to simply take a sheet of paper, split it into a grid of four parts, so just a big square and split it vertically, horizontally, so you have four quarters, and then and it doesn't really matter which way the axes go, but for the sake of argument, let's say you have important and then unimportant. They're the labels on the top against each of the boxes, and then, down one side, put urgent and non-urgent. So that means you now have four boxes, and one of them is urgent and important. You will have another one that is urgent but unimportant. You will have another one which is urgent but unimportant, and then, finally, unimportant and non-urgent. So it's pretty obvious what happens next, because, obviously, the things that are urgent and important. So these would be the high value activities that you previously identified.
Speaker 1:Those are the things that absolutely have to get done, and you really need to then get into your diary the way I used to do it, because I come from working much more with paper than doing it on an iPad or a laptop, whatever you're using. But however you manage your time, whatever your time management is where you set your appointments, put time aside in there to make sure that those important and urgent activities are handled, and if you need support, get it, because it's really important that you take responsibility for this, because once you take responsibility for this because once you take responsibility for it, you can control it, you can drive it, but if you don't take responsibility for it, the chances are it won't happen, and this is where things start to go astray, and then you're in catch up. You're losing opportunities, you might be getting into really dire circumstances with your business. So this kind of stuff, I know a lot of people kick back against it, because a lot of salespeople, going back to the disc model, tend to be a DI, and I'm a DI and all that means in this sense is we tend to be big picture.
Speaker 1:We just want to get things done. We don't like planning, we don't like looking at lots of steps. We'll tend to do things on the fly a little bit. We'll make it up as we go along, but within that, the weakness we have is that we can miss things. We don't tend to do step by step very easily or very naturally. We tend to wing it and there is then the danger that we'll miss things. We'll also tend to put things off until they're really urgent. So if it's not urgent, they probably won't get done. So think of that. If you can do, get a disk profile done, just so you've got some insight. It doesn't have to be a really expensive one. A lot of sites will give you a free one, but it's just important to get some handle on how you run as an individual.
Speaker 1:And if what I'm saying resonates with you, if it starts to sound familiar, then look, there's a flag there that you are probably leaving things to the last minute a little bit too often. You might get stressful. I mean, one of the reasons we do it is excitement. You know we actually. It's actually exciting from one perspective to leave things to the very last minute and then get them over the line, and excitement can be one of the things that drives us. And what you'll often see with salespeople is a sort of sawtooth in orders, in that they will not do so much at the beginning of the month because there's a whole month to get things done, so you can put things off. And then all of a sudden later in the month they realize that time is running out and they really need to get those orders in. So all the orders tend to come in towards the end of the month and then each month that cycle repeats. It is a kind of rinse and repeat, but it's not a good one. This is why I'm recording this podcast.
Speaker 1:Look at how you manage priorities because, as exciting as it all is, you really want your business to be unexciting from the purpose of cash flow, because you just want good cash flow coming in. So work through, work through those two steps. We'll do the disk profile first, so you understand a little bit more about how you work, but then look at those two, those two processes, as We'll do the disk profile first, so you understand a little bit more about how you work, but then look at those two processes as the next stage. So the first one, to just put 20 minutes aside. No interruptions, no distractions. Look at the activities that have to be done every week.
Speaker 1:These might be the steps within your sales process that you need to be managing. You really need to understand your sales process. You need to understand what your numbers are and these are real numbers, not what you're guessing at, because you'll always guess in your favor. So you need to look at, for example, how many phone calls do you make to get one appointment? That's conversion rate that you need to understand. If those are two aspects of your sales process, because understanding the process and being able to put numbers around it tells you where you're strong and where you're weak, and you need to bring up the areas where you're weak. Just get better at them. You don't have to get better at them by a huge amount. Even a 10% improvement can make a huge difference to bottom line. But if you don't know what the steps are and you don't know where you're good and where you're bad, then you're working in the dark and you're likely to struggle and it's very, very difficult from that position to get to a stable cash flow. If that's a possibility in your business, okay.
Speaker 1:So high value, low value activities, which ones really contribute to your business, which ones are less important. They don't contribute too much and they could potentially be handled by somebody else and then draw out the grid however you want to do it whether it's on a piece of paper, on the computer somehow doesn't matter but identify the important activities that are urgent, the important activities that are non-urgent, so obviously the urgent one. These urgent activities need to get scheduled in really quickly, with sufficient time and resource to get them done. The important but non-urgent do need to get scheduled. That's's the other thing. Don't leave them until they become urgent, but have space to cover those important but non-urgent. Now this might come down to how you schedule your week, as an example.
Speaker 1:Now some people hate any kind of structure in their week. They find structure restricting, and I think you can look at structure in one of two ways. It's either supporting you, so it's something you stand on almost to get ahead of everybody else, or at least to meet your own targets, or you find you're stuck inside the structure and it's really closing in on you and you can't move and it's something you fight against. So I know a lot of people I work with a lot of people who get into that latter mode and structure is something that they find very restricted. But if you can step back from that and just set it up in such a way that there is sufficient structure for you to get things done but that you can also enjoy what you're doing, so for the urgent but unimportant activities, make sure there is a time slot every week. Let's say it's Thursday mornings. You do two hours of getting those things done if that's what it takes. Or Friday afternoon. Maybe Friday afternoon is quieter for you because a lot of clients are thinking about the weekend. They maybe go home early on a Friday. Whatever the situation is To, friday afternoon may be a great time to get the important but non-urgent things done. What's an example of that?
Speaker 1:Well, in some of the companies I've worked in, things like expenses. I hated doing expenses because it was one of those process things. I'd sit down, go through a spreadsheet, get all my receipts out, all that sort of thing. Really tedious, really boring. But if I didn't do it every week and I could get it done in less than an hour usually every week, if I didn't do it every week, I then had a month's worth to do, which was even worse. So this is why handling things on a regular basis is far, far better than leaving it until there's a huge pile of things to do that you really loathe doing, and then you've you know that can be a day gone just sorting those things.
Speaker 1:So getting these regular habits is really important, just to get efficient. It means you can get the things done while you've got some focus. So for me, doing expensive or doing detailed stuff, I can generally handle about 20 minutes before I start getting really bored with it, and you may be the same. So make sure you've got 20 minute slots available so that you can. You've got the focus. You need to get it done, but then you move on and do the things that you do enjoy doing. So that is primarily what I wanted to cover in this podcast, but I think this is so important.
Speaker 1:It underlies our activities on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly, quarterly. However, you're running Once you can get some sort of habit let's call it that, because some people hate the word structure so maybe you develop habits that are regular and they get the important things done. So, again, not to overstress it, but you need to understand what those things are Anything that is not important that you can hand off to somebody else, provided it's getting done properly, then do that because it frees you up from those activities that, frankly, you may well find boring. Anyway, if you enjoy doing them, that's fine, but be aware that they can be low value activities. So be aware that you may be indulging yourself a little. So just be real about that and make sure that you only allocate the appropriate amount of time to get those tasks done. So don't if it's something you enjoy and it would really take 20 minutes, but yeah, look, I'll give it an hour Just be aware of what you're doing. If that's how you're playing things. And as for the rest of it, make sure the urgent things get done. If they're not important, we'll put in. Make sure there is time to get them done if they may become important because they've been neglected. But do get a good view of what has to be done.
Speaker 1:So the key things are, I guess, as a final recap, do get a handle on your personality type and just try to get more insight into yourself, and I always find these things very interesting. I like this because there's only four types of aspect to your personality. Other things. You might prefer something else, like Maya Briggs, for example, but there they've got 16 different types of people and to me it's just too many. So that's me. I like this because it's simple.
Speaker 1:Get some insights into the things you enjoy doing and why, and maybe the things you don't like doing and why as well. Remember, there's nothing wrong with you as a personality. We're all a bit different, but we're all a blend of different personality types. But once you understand why you maybe spend more time on things that are less important, it's then a case of stepping back, taking some ownership, taking some responsibility, having that discipline to start to schedule activities and get habits that support you and support your business, because, ultimately, if everything's going well, you're going to be enjoying things more anyway.
Speaker 1:You maybe have more time to either it might be employ someone to take on some of the tasks that you really don't like. If you've got a regular cash flow happening, that's profitable and you'll definitely be in a less stressed situation. You'll be able to step back and spend more time working on the business as well as working in the business, and I think that's one of the most important things. Okay, so that's the podcast. I hope you found that useful. Please go do it if some pennies have dropped for you, or maybe some flags have been raised, and I'll speak to you in the next podcast. So bye for now.