Too many salespeople are singing from other people’s sheets of music.
If you struggle to use the sales advice you’re given, like, ‘Fill the pipeline!’ or ‘Make one more call!’, you’re not alone.
These aren’t bad pieces of advice, but they may not be for you. They’re written by people who were talking about what works for THEM, but it may not be the best advice for YOU.
Instead of trying to fit the way you sell into someone else’s mold, let’s identify where you do your best work in sales and ensure you spend more time there – because those are the things that won’t be a struggle for you to do even if they’re hard!
To learn how to identify our sales ‘sweet spot’ and spend more time there, we sat down with Dr. Travis Parry, PhD, CEO of the Make Time Institute. As a former financial planner and expert in how humans optimize their life balance, he understands the challenges salespeople go through to optimize the time they spend selling.
To start this system, Parry said to ensure you’re not using it to simply do more work in an 80-hour week.
Achieving balance, he said, is to do more in less time. If we want to truly serve our prospects and customers, it likely means cutting back on the hours we’re spending on the things that don’t yield the best results.
Because we’re trimming hope from our sales strategy, we’ll use the acronym TRIM to guide us through creating a system with a trigger, ensuring it’s repeatable, building in ways to improve it and of course, ensuring it’s measurable and getting us results.
T – Trigger: The best time to figure out where your selling ‘sweet spot’ is, is of course, NOW! You’ll need to track how you spend your sales time for a week, so you can get started on that immediately.
R – Repeatable: First, we need to track where we’re spending our time when we’re selling. This includes the time we spend checking emails on our phone and returning client calls while we’re running errands. If it’s work-related, log it for a week. From there, ‘bucket’ how you’re spending your time. Your categories might include CRM entry, sending emails, making calls, attending networking events, visiting prospect job sites, and the other things you do as a salesperson.
Once we have a list of the ways we’re spending our time, Parry says to prioritize. Regardless of what any sales experts have told you, look at this list from your perspective: where do YOU get the best sales results? Is it networking? Or is dropping by prospect offices on spur-of-the-moment visits?
If you’re in a sales role where your activities are limited, like only making calls and setting appointments, ask, ‘What types of prospects do I enjoy speaking with the most?’ Find the job titles, people, or tasks you enjoy connecting with the most and make those types of people your ‘sweet spot’.
If you’re having trouble identifying your ‘sweet spot’, Parry says to ask: If I could only do one thing on this list that would be the best way for me to make sales (regardless if my boss would freak out that the other things weren’t being done), what is that one activity?
Now that you’ve identified your ‘sweet spot’, you’ll want to ensure your calendar reflects your priority. Build in time each day to process through all the emails, voicemails, and memos you get so that you can get them off your plate and spend more time focusing on the way you sell best.
I – Improvable: To improve this system, Parry says to try working in your ‘sweet spot’ for 90 days and look at whether you’re prioritizing that activity in your schedule. If your calendar doesn’t reflect that ‘in-person networking’, for instance, is your sweet spot, then improve by dedicating more time there. If you’ve been putting more time into your ‘sweet spot’, then further improve by cutting out the second bucket on the list of ways you spend sales time, and replace it with more of your ‘sweet spot.’
M – Measurable: While it may seem tough to measure the effects of a system that’s designed to give you better balance and joy in your work, it’s not impossible.
Parry says to measure the effectiveness of this system, you can absolutely look at whether your deal throughput increased during the time you were in your ‘sweet spot’. Because you’re working in your best zone, you’re going to be more likely to dive into that work. That’s how you’ll know you’re achieving more with less – and opening up the time to be balanced in all areas of life.