Stretching the Hours

by Graham Denton

Your most precious - and limited - resource is your selling time. Not only does nobody ever have enough of it, but the few hours you do have are constantly being threatened by non-selling "administrivia." In fact, as Miller Heiman and other sales productivity organization have been saying for years, most salespeople probably spend less than eight or ten hours a week actually selling. No wonder there's such an interest in daytimers, automatic calendars, and other devices to help you make the most of every hour.

Marc Corsini is president of Corsini Consulting Group, a Birmingham, Alabama, sales training organization. Interviewed in the July/August 1999 issue of Selling Power, he presents some novel ideas to crack this ancient nut. Of the fifteen time-stretching thoughts that he suggests there, these six strike me as the most unusual:

Focus on outcomes, not activities. And while you're at it, consider renaming your "To Do" list; call it "To Be Done." This is a semantic distinction with a point because, as Corsini tartly observes, "No one cares how much you're working, only how much you're accomplishing."

Look for robbers. By this Corsini means all those well-intentioned (all right, some are not so well-intentioned) "co-workers, friends, vendors, family members, and even customer who rob you of time." Avoid them, manage them, and perhaps most important of all, learn to say "No" or at least "Not now." It's amazing how many problems will solve themselves without your "indispensable" input if you simply let it be known that you're temporarily inaccessible.

"Quick" questions don't mean quick answers. This is really a spinoff of the previous point, but it's valuable enough to merit a separate mention. Janice may really think that her "one quick little problem" is just that, but if you have to spend two hours hunting for a solution, that immediately turns this triviality into a time-drain. Avoid this trap by assessing the solution time before agreeing to answer the question.

Take weekly "vacations." Not actual vacations, but the mental ordering, the desk-cleaning, and the task tie-ups that we typically perform just before we're going to be away for a while. Pick one day a week and pretend it's the day before your two weeks off. "Use the time to develop a sense of urgency, to delegate, and to focus."

Throw out your daytimer. Radical suggestion, this one, but worth considering. Corsini's point isn't that daytimers in themselves are inefficient, but that their very expandability tends to get them clogged with "unproductive to-dos." As an alternate, he recommends a technological backtrack: Each day, use a fresh 3X5 card to remind yourself of "the three most important things you need to do that day." Use the back of the card to note appointments and meetings.

Stop playing phone tag. Corsini recommends three strategies for accomplishing this. One is common sense: place calls when you're most likely to reach people - for example, an hour or two before the workday officially starts. Two, cultivate relationships with key contacts' assistants, so they can put you through even when the contact "isn't in." Three, leave "thoughtful, creative messages defining exactly what you need and your timeframe."

All of these tips are variations on a general theme, which is that success comes from working smarter, not necessarily harder. Remember Parkinson's Law, Corsini says, as you strive to "accomplish, not work, as much as you can in the shortest amount of time."