Cultivating personal productivity is something that takes practice and persistence. You must be disciplined and have the drive it takes to reach your goals. How do you learn where to focus your energy? What activities and processes should be front and center? Dionne Mischler joins Paul in this episode of Sales Reinvented to share her opinion on productivity.
Dionne is the founder and CEO of Inside Sales by Design and specializes in helping clients achieve their goals. She is passionate about sales and driving results and outcomes. With over two decades of sales experience, her insight is a welcome addition to this episode!
Salespeople have a bad rep for being “ADD” and jumping from one shiny object to another. But successful sales professionals are disciplined and focused. They follow Dionne’s definition of productivity: being engaged in the right activities at the right time with the right intention.
Dionne points out that things will come up that you want to run by product or marketing—but that they don’t need to be done now. Focus your energy and stay engaged in selling activities for the right length of time. Only then should you attend to other tasks.
Dionne points out that If you work in sales, closing a deal is glorified. The arrival mentality. What’s not focused on is the blood, sweat, and tears that go into a customer saying “yes”. There’s pre-call planning, rehearsing and proactive. You have to educate the customer on your product and advocate for its usefulness.
Dionne notes that “people don’t see the sweat equity that goes into making it look effortless.''
To hone your craft and get to the point where your prospects consistently say yes, you must invest in career development. Dionne recommends choosing a skill every month and focus on improving that skill. You get to decide if you’ll become the next-level professional by the time you’re willing to invest to get there.
Dionne advocates for utilizing pen and paper as a productivity tool. They don’t run out of batteries and serve up endless distractions. There is value in sitting down with a blank page and sketching out a plan for the future.
What are your goals for the year? The next quarter? What about the upcoming month or next day?
She has her clients sit down and go through this process as well. Dionne believes it helps develop the right mindset and lays out a plan for productivity. If you pinpoint a theme you want to carry throughout the year it can make a huge impact.
Dionne points out that iron sharpens iron. Don’t engage with people who don’t sharpen you or push you towards greatness. Sure you can hang out with coworkers or have the occasional lunch with a friend. But focus on developing relationships that drive you to be better at what you do. Be intentional with all of your time and the activities you invest that time in. After all, you can’t soar with the eagles if you’re hanging out with the turkeys.
To hear Dionne’s top 3 productivity do’s and top 3 don'ts as well as her favorite story, listen to the whole episode now.
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Productivity measurement begins with a plan. Productivity is what you achieve from what you’ve planned. You need to be able to get done what you set out to do. So how do you begin to plan? What steps should a sales professional take? Luigi Prestinenzi joins Paul to share how he continues to increase his productivity.
Luigi is the Co-Founder & Head of Growth at Sales IQ Group and hosts the SalesIQ Podcast, based in Melbourne, Australia. He is a coach and consultant who aims to help businesses unlock the full potential of their sales team. To hear his take on productivity and what you can do to improve your sales, listen to the whole episode!
It’s simple. If a sales professional isn’t doing their job and closing sales, the business suffers. A salesperson is only as good as the last month of the billing period. There is a lot of turnover in sales because they hold the most visible position that is held accountable when they’re not productive.
If they aren’t reaching goals or making quotas, then what are they doing?
There are only so many hours in the day and Luigi points out that you must protect the limited time you have. A salesperson must learn how to focus on the tasks that reach the desired outcome. What are the metrics you need to achieve? What do you need to start tracking? You can’t achieve what you don’t measure.
The world lives in an age of distraction. Every smart-phone notification distracts you from the tasks you need to be focusing on. Social media can be a great asset or your greatest hindrance. Don’t get lost in a sea of communication that won’t deliver the outcome you’re looking for.
Luigi states that 50-60% of sales teams are unable to reach sales targets.
So how do you change that? Start tracking your performance. What are you doing when you’re being productive and actively closing sales? What were you doing then that you aren’t doing now? Know the tasks you need to do, schedule them in your calendar, and complete them. It requires discipline.
A successful salesperson holds themselves accountable to the goals they’ve set. Many people don’t hold themselves accountable, and instead, they try and justify their actions with excuses. Luigi points out that finding success is hard, and if you don’t protect your time as your greatest asset, you won’t be productive.
Working harder, longer is not the answer. So what is?
Luigi states you need to get some productivity tools in place. Start using Calendly to schedule meetings and eliminate the back-and-forth of calendar volley-ball. You get to choose where people can schedule meetings. Use Seamless.ai to build lists for prospecting.
Do you want to hear the rest of Luigi’s productivity hacks? Listen to the whole episode!
Luigi is a strong advocate for prospecting and believes it’s fundamental to a sales professionals’ success. If prospecting is your weakness, you must spend time improving your abilities. Luigi points out a few key things that can help:
To be productive you must stop starting over and doing everything from scratch, every time. Templates allow you to be more efficient!
Luigi shares some powerful strategies in this episode. Don’t miss it!
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Emotional literacy—sometimes also referred to as self-awareness—is the ability to appropriately understand and express your feelings. It is key to becoming a productive sales professional. Why? Understanding your emotions and what keeps you from being a successful salesperson gives you the steps to move in a positive direction.
Here to talk with Paul about emotional literacy and sales call reluctance is Connie Kadansky. She is the president of Exceptional Sales Performance and a notable coach in the industry, specializing in sales call reluctance. If you’re ready to overcome what’s holding you back and become a productive and effective professional—don’t miss this one!
Connie’s definition of productivity is “aligning and integrating all activities with the salesperson’s goals and the goals of the company”. If a sales professional is struggling with productivity and unable to reach their goals—they’re not aligned with the goals of the company. So, why aren’t they productive?
Connie points out that it is often tied to sales call reluctance. Sales call reluctance is an emotional hesitation to prospect. She recommends facing the reluctance head-on. There is always a purpose to the emotion, but you must learn how to identify and navigate those emotions to become productive.
Keep listening as Connie and Paul discuss steps to improve productivity and attributes of a productive sales professional.
Emotional literacy and sales reluctance go hand-in-hand. You must face the emotions that are holding you back from prospecting—not ignore them. When you accept the emotion for what it is, then you can decide to move into a more productive emotion.
Connie points out that it becomes much easier when you acknowledge that the sale isn’t about you.
You are offering a potential client a product or system that will offer them value! She also notes that finding an accountability buddy can be instrumental in reaching your goals. In fact, your chances of achieving a goal go up to 72% if you have someone to keep you accountable.
Connie’s top 5 tips to become a more productive sales professional include:
To hear more details about Connie’s tips make sure you listen to the full episode!
A great quote from Jim Collin’s reads “If you have more than 3 priorities, then you don’t have any priorities”. Connie took this quote to heart, and wrote out a lost of her top priorities—and came up with twenty-seven. Knowing she needed to narrow this list down, she asked herself three questions:
What is the most important task? What is most urgent? What priorities have deadlines?
Once you have narrowed down your tasks to three works in progress, an effective way to knock them out is by chunking out the work. Break the tasks down into manageable steps and be disciplined enough to carry them out. Planning and prioritizing can make all the difference.
To hear more of Connie’s advice, tips, and strategies, listen to the whole episode of Sales Reinvented!
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If you’re a sales professional and know you need to place importance on prioritizing tasks and becoming productive, this is the place to start! Are you ready to gain focus on what’s important and start closing more sales? Paul’s guest, Liz Heiman, lays out where to place your priorities, and how to become a productive salesperson.
Liz is the Chief Strategy Officer and Sales Leadership Coach at Alice Heiman, LLC. She is passionate about helping businesses maximize their full potential by increasing profitability. She enjoys strategizing plans for growth and success. Liz lends her expertise in this eye-opening episode of the Sales Reinvented Podcast!
According to Liz, productivity is the act of prioritizing tasks and being efficient at carrying them out. Sales professionals can get distracted and lose focus without clear priorities and plans in place. It can also be difficult to be productive when leadership pulls you in different directions. If you’re in sales management, you need to allow your sales team to do what they do best: close sales.
Management needs to focus on running interference and allowing salespeople to stay on-task.
In larger companies, this could be mitigated with the established of a sales enablement team. If you don’t have the means to create this team you must be thoughtful about expectations. Perhaps you can implement systems to limit unnecessary workload. Above all, don’t change the strategy for your sales team and leave them reeling and frustrated. Enable them to do their jobs to the best of their ability.
It is almost instinct for any professional to get to work and immediately check their email. It becomes the thing that controls us and steals our time. Liz points out that this is NOT the first task you should be engaging in. It is important to be responsive to customers. However, if you prioritize email, you never get to the things that are important and only deal with the things that are urgent.
Liz recommends diving into your CRM. Be sure you are entering data and keeping it up to date—even if you hate it. Look at your reports, get yourself organized, then dive into your funnel. Start by closing the sales at the end of the funnel, then work your way backward and follow up on leads. Don’t let them get cold. Leverage the power of the funnel to prioritize your day.
Liz points out that an important attribute of a sales professional is the ability to see the end of the road before they take their first step. An efficient person cannot just react, respond, and wing it. They need to ask themselves where their energy should be spent. What roadblocks may come up? Can they close on this sale? They must plan around the things that get them results. If they can’t envision the end result—closing the sale—how can they work backwards and plan each step?
Liz completely understands the power of planning. She feels lost and disorganized without it. Years ago, she was taught how to properly map out her time. She blocked time in her schedule for prospecting, calls to make, projects to complete, etc. This gave her the framework she needed to make deadlines and move sales forward.
If she didn’t utilize this strategy, she found herself floundering. She’d look at her week and question what, if anything, she got done. She recommends planning out your time so that you don’t lose track of the priorities or miss deadlines. A lack of planning creates more stress. And if you want time to play, you have to get your work done!
For a full picture of Liz’s strategies and tactics, listen to the whole episode of Sales Reinvented!
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Mastering productivity management is a stellar way for salespeople to become more effective in their jobs. Learning strategies to manage and foster your productivity can take you to a new level of success. Paul’s guest today, Lisa Magnuson, shares what she believes is the key to being productive and successfully—and repeatedly—landing clients.
After years of experience in the sales industry, Lisa founded Top Line Sales in 2005. She is the author of multiple best-selling books on sales and one of the most effective coaches in the industry. Her business prides itself on helping you land seven-figure deals and cultivating a sales process that is productive, efficient, and effective.
A salesperson can often be efficient—they send emails and make phone calls in a timely manner. But the work means nothing if you are not effective. If your effort doesn’t result in securing meetings (or the eventual sale) then you are not being productive. So how does a sales professional forge ahead and foster productivity? How do they begin to land sales? Keep listening for Lisa’s take on the question.
Lisa recommends a process she calls ‘pre-call planning’ to help boost your effectiveness. In fact, she believes if you aren’t doing pre-call planning, you are incapable of being effective. So what does pre-call planning look like? It begins with setting aside some time to systematically think about where you are in the sales process.
What do you want to accomplish?
What are the next steps?
What could go wrong?
What will make the conversation a great experience for your client? Many salespeople don’t take the time to engage in this process because it is time-consuming. They believe with their expertise and personality that they can wing it and come away with a win. Lisa states that you will be 20% more effective if you implement pre-call planning.
Lisa operates with a few key philosophies that she’s found to be effective. One of those is how she manages her calendar. She does not let her schedule run her and never schedules back-to-back meetings or phone calls. After each meeting, she invests her time in follow-up actions that were discussed.
If you set aside that time while you are in the right frame of mind, you will knock out much more than if you have to go back hours or even days later to finish up tasks. The sense of urgency allows you to complete tasks as effectively as possible and important things won’t get missed.
To hear her other philosophies on time-management and systems to have in place, listen to the whole episode!
Lisa’s favorite productivity story relates to a client she worked with last year in the shipbuilding and repair industry. She helped the client do a SWOT analysis (a strategic planning technique to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). They also did relationship mapping, while implementing other methodologies—it helped her client landed a $40 million contract.
The contract they landed wasn’t even originally interested in working with them! But because of the effort they put forth, the research, and the pre-call planning, they went front a long-shot to a sure thing. Within the first 90 days of working with that client, they referred someone else to work with them! It’s just one of Lisa’s proven strategies for landing sales.
Listen to the whole episode for more productivity management strategies and tips!
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