Focusing your activities for a productive week can add hours to your life and sales in your pocket.
For those of us in B2B sales, we typically operate on a weekly cadence as professionals. This Monday-Friday culture mindset is very hard to change, so we might as well live into it fully.
This is where everyone is mentally during the typical week:
Monday: Having a hard time transitioning to new week. Overload of emails from the weekend. Overwhelmed until later afternoon.
Tuesday-Wednesday: Getting into the swing of things and working on their own projects or sales.
Thursday: Still focused in the morning. Starting to think about the weekend in the afternoon. Coming up for air.
Friday: Checked out and relaxed. Maybe golfing.
Saturday: Not thinking about business at all. Probably at kids’ events.
Sunday: Resting from the week. Might get a head start on things Sunday night after the kids are down.
That’s millions of people marching to the same drum every week. The cadence is still true even with all the mobile technology we have in play.
Too many salespeople don’t match their activities with people’s natural mindsets. If you send an email that needs a decision at the wrong time, you may not get any attention, much less a response. If sent on a different day, there might have been a different outcome.
So consider streamlining how you sell, and stay focused and disciplined. It will save you much more time and allow you to be efficient.
Loading Your Sales Funnel
Assuming you have all the sales systems in place and integrated, here is how you can keep your sales pipeline full and moving:
Sunday: Yes, your week starts Sunday night. Simply go into your CRM and do two things: 1) Review and update all your Deals and 2) set follow-up tasks for people you want to create a touch point for. It could be people in your pipeline or anyone else you’d like to reach out to. This is your goal for the week.
Monday: If you didn’t do your Sunday activity, do it first thing in the morning. Set up any emails to schedule for sending late afternoon or early Tuesday. These communications should be strategic and designed for engagement.
Tuesday – Wednesday: You can review your follow-up and round back where necessary. You should get responses from your Monday activities and set meetings or get on the phone. Send out any mass communications, rather than one-to-one selling communications so people can think about your content and ideas and build trust.
Thursday: This is a review day. Tie up any loose ends. Create content or find content that would be valuable to share with your network and pipeline.
Friday: People are checked out today. You can make some light touch points just to make relational connections, but don’t expect responses. Work on your systems and get things organized. The week starts over in a couple of days.
Saturday: Take the day off. Don’t send anything. It’s not professional.
So there’s your cheat sheet. If you stay on schedule, you should only spend a few hours on selling.
Simple Sales Process
The simple sales process is essentially broken down in three stages:
- Create engagement
- Meet
- Send a proposal
It’s three steps. The majority of your activities are in step 1 which is why the weekly cadence of loading your sales funnel is so crucial. Learning how to create engagement efficiently is critical. People are busy and don’t want to be bothered. But they do want value. That means you have to figure out how to be valuable and not annoying.
Steps 2 and 3 are typically locked and loaded if you are a decent salesperson who has spent any time in your industry. You understand the nuances.
Cohesive Systems
All the systems that need to be set up and used have to work well together. You are the fighter pilot in a cockpit operating the controls.
If you are efficient, then your selling becomes easy. If you struggle to be productive, then selling can take much longer. So get efficient.
Over time, you will have a continuous stream of sales meetings and referrals. Missing days can take away the momentum or opportunity for responses and engagement.
So there you go. Get selling and save yourself hours of wasted energy when you keep this predictable rhythm.