As a motivational conference speaker, I always ask audiences about their biggest sales challenges, and ‘time management’ inevitably comes up. This is a critical sales problem that can easily tank an organization when left unchecked.

In fact, the scarcest resource in sales is time. Just imagine a world where you had unlimited time–you could sell as much as you wanted to. But since time is so scarce, great sales people must manage just like it were bars of gold.

Return-On-Time

Most sales people do a lot of different things during the course of a normal workday. But usually only two or three of those activities directly contribute to making money. All top sales people are vigilant about how they spent their time. It’s not about sales motivation, but rather ensuring that they are spending their time on those activities that lead to the highest return-on-time.

For example, many sales people are bogged down in paperwork or prospect research, but this task can be easily outsourced to an admin. Instead, a great sales person will spend her time on those critical prospecting activities that only she can do–like prospecting calls, asking for introductions, networking, making client calls, or conducting sales meetings. Those activities generate money, and lots of it. Therefore they are high return-on-time activities.

So stop doing–or outsource–those activities that are yielding a low return on your time and focus only on the key activities that make you money.
The question that I always have my clients ask themselves throughout the day is, “Is what I’m doing making me the most money?” If the answer is yes, then do more of it. If not, stop.

What are your highest return-on-time activities? Please share below.