Time Equals Success

By: Thomas Young

As a sales and marketing professional, it is important to understand a basic fundamental of success in the field.  Where you spend your sales and marketing time determines your rewards.  There is no more appropriate phrase to sales and marketing then Òtime is money.Ó  How you spend your time determines if you reach your sales goals and the amount of money you and your company earns.  The problem comes in choosing wisely those activities that are the best use of your time and energies.  Here are a few suggestions that can help you determine where to invest time and maximize the return on your time.

What are Your Goals?

Your goals should be very clear.  This is the starting point to understand the activities that are the most important use of your time.  Many people wander aimlessly through their time because they donÕt have direction or take their direction from others.  Written goals provide direction and there are many resources available to help you in preparing goals and a personal mission statement.

Look at Your Best Customers

Your best customers provide the key indicator that determines where you should spend your sales and marketing time.  How did you find those customers?  What did you do that resulted in that customer coming to you?  How did you prospect to those customers?  These are the key activities that should be a part of your sales and marketing efforts.

Run a ROT Analysis

You have probably heard of ROI, or return on investment.  This is an indicator of your return from invested funds into a business venture.  You probably have not heard of ROT, or return on time.  This is a way of measuring what progress you see towards your goals based on how you spend your time.  Isolate the key tasks you perform each day and determine their ROT in your sales and marketing efforts.  Which of these tasks resulted in landing your best customers?  What can you do to spend more time on activities that have an excellent ROT and minimize other activities?

Keep Balance in Your Life

Once you determine your key areas of focus, remember to do things to keep your life in balance. A healthy, balanced life outside of work leads to more product work. Look for balance in the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual phases of your life.  This includes spending time in each of these areas to re-charge your self.  Sales and marketing activities can be stressful and the best way to deal with stress is balance.

More Time is Not Always Better

It will be tempting to put a lot of time into the sales activities you determine to be most rewarding.  Keep in mind that this may result in burnout and that balance is the key to functioning at maximum efficiency and getting better results.  Working harder can lead to burnout and stress.  Work more effectively and get more results in less time through balance and by focusing on the areas that bring you the most rewards.

Every day you choose how to spend your time.  Look back at what has worked to bring in your best customers and maintain balance in your life to manage stress.  This will be time well spent and result in sales success for you and your business.