Ultimately, the choice between spending time or investing time is yours, and whichever you choose will have a bearing on how well you sell.
Time is money. You’ve heard that expression 1,000 times or more, and as many times as you’ve heard it, you have ignored it.
Every year I get hundreds of requests for a course in time management.
And every year I give my answer: why are you asking me what to do with your time? Don’t you know what to do?
Is it time management or wasted time?
Is it time management or procrastination?
Is it time management or lack of productivity?
Is it time management or lack of achievement?
Is it time management or poor time choices?
You tell me, I’m concentrating on my time challenges, not yours.
So if time is money, as suggested earlier, what are you doing with yours?
Are you spending it or investing it?
And how are your time investments working for you?
Are you frustrated because there are not enough hours in the day?
Spending time or investing time is a choice. Here are some examples of choices. See which ones apply to you.
• Spend time watching TV or invest time reading a book.
• Spend time drinking in a bar or invest time writing or preparing for a sales call.
• Spend time playing a video game or invest time learning social selling.
• Spend time watching a movie or invest time talking to your kids.
Investing time with your family pays the best dividend – love.
Is it time management? No, it’s actually time allocation. It’s how you choose to use your time right now. How are you spending or investing your 16-18 hours a day?
New pressures have crept into your time – and for many it’s hours, not minutes a day. They have seeped into the work fabric and are firmly planted in your life.
How many a day? Ten? A hundred? More?
Texting
The instant communication mode – instant and unavoidable.
Smartphone/social media
People (not you, of course) are addicted to them. They can’t sit down without looking at it, and responding to it. You spend hours on your mobile device with text, search, email, apps, games and then you start talking. For those who don’t think they spend that much time on the phone, consider an hour and a half a day is 2,700 minutes a month– almost two full 24-hour days a month. And most people spend more. I’m not saying it’s all bad time, I am saying it’s 90 hours, you measure its value.
These new time-pulls are creating a reallocation of your allotted time. The biggest is social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube demand business and personal attention, and more time allocation – time you and I never had to allocate before. Add blogs, ezines, emails, and websites, and you have hundreds of new hours demanding, no commanding, both attention and time.
Let’s add these to your new allocation of time. Say, three hours a day (minimum for all the items above), which is 15 hours a week over five days. That’s 780 hours a year. My number would be closer to 1,000, how about you?
Here’s the opportunity, or the rub, depending on how you look at it. In all this allocation or reallocation of time, make certain you’re addressing the real goals of the time investment process.
Here’s what you must be concentrating on achieving during these allocated hours.
• Making connections.
• Helping customers.
• Providing value.
• Service in an instant.
• Building relationships.
• Earning referrals.
• Building a social selling platform.
• Writing and blogging.
• Following up with hot accounts.
• Making sales.
Referrals are 75 per cent hit – start there. LinkedIn is a professional connecting platform – start there.
You might want to allocate some hours for reading, family, and travel. I do.
Jeffrey Gitomer is an American author, professional speaker and business trainer, who writes and lectures internationally on sales, customer loyalty and personal development. © 2017 All rights reserved. Don’t reproduce this document without written permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
