Effective time-management strategies for sales agents

One of the first things you learn as a sales agent is that selling things to people is hard. More often than not, people are reluctant to part from their hard-earned money, no matter how good your offer is. This is why becoming a good sales agent doesn’t happen overnight. Getting the necessary experience and skills often takes years of practice and learning. But, what if we told you that you can speed up this process by utilizing clever time management solutions. Sounds good, right? Especially when you have the right sales automation software on your side. Well, in this article, we are going to cover the must-know time-management strategies for sales agents.

Why is time management important for sales agents?

The age-old saying “Time is money” is something that every salesperson feels deep inside. As one, you are literally using your time to make money. There is no product or service in between you and the money you are after. Therefore, it makes sense that you should try to be as effective with your time as possible. Good sales agents are surprisingly good at managing their time and understanding the everyday limitations that it entails. Furthermore, they are well aware of how small improvements in time management can have a compound effect. Therefore, if you wish to enhance your sales skills, take the following time-management strategies into account and make the best of them.

Top five time-management strategies for sales agents

The following strategies that we will outline should help you get the most out of your time. So, while they might not make you better at selling, they should give you the necessary tools to work on it. As mentioned, becoming a good sales agent takes time. So, use the following strategies to give yourself as much time as possible. And to use that time as effectively as possible.

Task filtering

As a sales agent, you will have a ton of daily tasks to perform. Some are quite important and require your immediate attention. Others are less important and can be postponed. But, the main thing you need to do is to first filter through your tasks and see which is which. Simply tackling them one by one is often counterproductive, as you can easily spend too much time on tasks that are not important. By first filtering and sorting them, you can see which tasks you need to finish today, and which ones you can postpone. We advise to have three categories:

• Tasks that you need to finish today.
• Tasks that you can postpone for tomorrow.
• And tasks that you can postpone for a later date.

By categorizing your tasks into these tree groups you will easily keep track of what is important, and what isn’t.

Ample preparation

One of the things that sales agents often fail to do is to prepare properly. Say that you need to present a product or a service. Most newbie sales agents will simply learn the necessary basics in order to promote the product properly. But, what they usually fail to do is to prepare themselves for follow-up questions that customers might have. And, while the “Let me get back to you on that!” answer might seem good enough, trust us, it isn’t. In order to keep the flow of conversation going with your customer, you need to have all the necessary info at hand. Having prior data is not only good for forecasting, but also for efficient customer management. By having it you won’t have to delegate the extra time in order to find and learn what the customers want to know.

Email efficiency

The modern sales agent lives or dies based on how well they manage their emails. You will spend a large amount of time going back and forth with your current clients and numerous potential ones. Therefore, if you want to make good use of your time, you need to learn how to be efficient with your emails. Our advice here is to both filter them as if they were any other tasks. And to keep up with them regularly. Being responsible with your email correspondence is a must if you wish to succeed.

Another thing we would advise is to brush up on your email writing skills. In order to make your emails efficient, you need to ensure that you can easily convey your ideas in as few words as possible. The fewer words you need to write, the less time it takes you to write an email. And, the clearer you are in your emails, the less time you have to spend explaining yourself. So, if you feel that your emails and long-winded or unclear, don’t shy away from learning some writing skills.

Limited multitasking

One of the common myths about sales agents is that you need to be good with multitasking. The reality is that trying to multitask is only going to bring mistakes, poor performance and sub-par results. Instead, what you need to focus on is proper planning and concentration. Good sales agents set up their agenda first, and only then start working. This allows them to focus entirely on the task at hand, and not worry whether something has slipped their mind. In the modern age, there are tons of apps and programs that make multitasking easy. Some are even quite precise, like MoversTech software for moving companies. So, instead of wasting your time multitasking, try to set yourself up for high performance in individual tasks.

Regular performance review

The last of our time-management strategies for sales agents is to conduct performance reviews on regular basis. All the strategies that we’ve outlined can help you. But, it is up to you to determine how successful they really are. To make this possible, we suggest that you layout objective parameters and compare your performance before and after implementing strategies. The only way to grow as a sales agent is to find issues in your everyday work and improve on them.