How To Protect Your Organization‘s Time

[Kevin Price]: Welcome back to that show that never ends, this is The Price of Business; love spending time with you, love letting you know what is going on. Alright, we‘re going to move quickly because time is of the essence. I do want to remind you that we‘ll talk a little bit about what is going on in the political front in the fore segment. Big upsets going on in Pennsylvania, incredible upset, I don‘t think people understand the implications of the upset in Kentucky; when you have a guy like Mitch McConnell, who is the senior senator from Kentucky and he is the senate minority leader he is the republican leader in the senate, his hand chosen person for the other U.S. senate seat got beat by a friend of mine, Rand Paul. I am telling you that is very, very significant and it is interesting to see. We will talk a little bit about the implications of that later on in the program but right now I want to talk about making the most of your business and growing your business and putting your business in the right direction. That‘s when I talk to my friends over there; Lin Fisher and Walter Rogers the great people at Baker Communications, bakercommunications.com. Lin is in here today for Walter Rogers; how are you my friend?

[Lin Fisher]: I am doing great Kevin good to be with you.

[KP]: Alright, real quickly give us the 411 on the great work of Baker Communications?

[LF]: Well Baker Communications is a global services company that is designed to help companies of any size essentially to create more revenue, more impact and be more efficient about growing their Business. We work with companies as large as fortune 500 companies and, as a matter of fact, we work with over 55% of the fortune 500 today.

[KP]: Very, very good. What do you got for us today? What do you have lined up?

[LF]: Well, you know Kevin; the big theme today that we have been hearing from our customers is dealing with organizational chaos. Organizational chaos really translates into; how do you protect your sales organizations time? You can‘t really sell if you are not spending time with your customers and there is so much demand on the time and attention of the sales organization and that sometimes sales people are asking themselves; when do I get a chance to talk to my customers? When do I get a chance to actually sell? So, we all know that time is money and the question really is how do you protect your time and ultimately how do you protect your organizations ability to generate revenue?

[KP]: Very, very good. I tell you right now, now more than ever, it is really interesting especially it seems the older we get as we have a work life, when we retire we tend to think a little differently, but, while we have a work life we really become cognizant of the important tradeoffs between time and money. We really want to make the absolute most of your time.

[LF]: Absolutely. Those two things are irreparably connected to each other; time does equal money. Working harder does not really mean working smarter and it is possibly the most prominent theme that we are dealing with today during this recovery, that everybody is experiencing. There is incredible pressure on people to make the most out of what they are doing but, the key thing that most sales organizations and sales managers don‘t get is that; the underlying principle to managing time is setting goals and more often than not, these managers are playing more defense than offense. What I mean by that is, you know, a manager is designed, you and I have talked about this before Kevin, should be an enabler and an enabler, in this context, will understand what goals are not ultimately leading to the master goal, which we will talk about in a second, and what things are draining the time and attention of the sales organization from actually connecting with customers. So the key is to set a goal and to understand what the master goal is and that master goal is essentially driving revenue. Understanding how or learning how to manage your time is only one piece of it. If you do not understand why you need to manage your time you will never get to where you need to be.

[KP]: No question about that. That time is a tool and really the single most precious one you have because, it is the one thing that you cannot replicate. All you can do is leverage.

[LF]: You know what, that is absolutely right. There is an old adage said that you only get so much time during the day and as that time gets depleted you can never recoup it. The best thing that a sales manager can do is to protect his organizations time and attention by being an enabler and understanding the cadence of what they are doing day in and day out, week over week and if they are not focusing their time on primarily, what we call high probability targets out there, which is relentlessly pursuing these targets you are not going to get the revenue you are out there looking for. We tend to do a lot of things that are not directly related to our master goal because it is easy to do, like little things that you think are important like busy work. People tend to do busy work when they don‘t really understand what it is that needs to be done to get to their ultimate goal. A manager‘s job is to remove all the fuzz and all the noise from the day to day operations and really help their sales team focus on what‘s most important, which is those high probability targets and staying in front of those customers.

[KP]: Yeah, no question about it. People need to be continually mindful of that because, of the fact that failure to keep that in mind means; that they are actually doing less at a higher cost.

[LF]: That‘s right. And the old eighty twenty rule comes into play here. You know that eighty percent of your time is spent on twenty percent of your customers and those top twenty percent of your customers generate eighty percent of your revenue. But you know, unfortunately sales reps during chaotic times tend to spend time with people that they like, people that like them, really working to take the path of least resistance for the most amount of money and that is often not an effective strategy. So, what is an effective strategy? I have a couple quick bullets here that I would like to give you. For sales managers, these are very simple principles that if you apply them day in and day out you will be able to help your organization and yourself stay on track. Essentially when you are looking to develop a cadence of what to do; if you know that something directly and effectively will support the master goal, than do it. If it is likely to support that goal but it doesn‘t have to be handled now then you should delay it. The last two are very simple. If it can contribute to that master goal but it can be done by someone else other that you than you should delegate it. Finally, if it isn‘t going to contribute in any meaningful way to help your teams drive revenue than dump it. So we‘ve got do it, delay it, delegate it and dump it, those are the four key principles.

[KP]: I love it. I love it. You elaborate those concepts very well. Do it, delay it, delegate it and dump it depending on what the circumstances are. You got it all covered at our sister website houstonbusinessdaily.com. Walter Rogers wrote that article. Protect their time you can‘t sell if you aren‘t spending time with customers. This is one of those rare context were enabling is a good word.

[KP]: We always think of it like; you mean like my drunk brother? What are you talking about enabling?

[LF]: Don‘t be an enabler in that context, exactly. But when we are talking about making money you have really got to remove the roadblocks, be that person that can enable your sales team to get to what‘s important and really just drop the rest. Stay focused. That is exactly correct.

[KP]: I love it. I encourage people to learn more about it, check out Houstonbusinessdaily.com. I think it is the number one right now, the top article listed there in our list of articles. Do you have any ideas of how many articles you guys have written?

[LF]: You know, there are so many out there it is hard to keep track but, I know that we continue to add to that list and it is really driven from what we hear from our customers day in and day out. This is, quite literally, the blocking and tackling of developing a strong powerful sales organization and so as we keep on hearing things from our customers we are going to keep on bringing these subjects to you and making an impact.

[KP]: Well you know we are working on a book, literally working on a book, Walter Rogers and I have talked about it and it is going to be probably something we are looking at possibly co-publishing with Baker Communications, in fact, through one of our sister websites called usbusinessdaily.com. So, I think it will be really exciting. It will be a great first book for usbusinessdaily.com and a great opportunity to take this message to a larger audience out there, even in our great radio audience. Bakercommunications.com, Lin Fisher has been our guest. The phone number there?

[KP]: bakercommunications.com. People have got to check that out because, let me tell yah folks, you have to do this thing right when it comes to yourselves, when it comes to your marketing, your customer service rather, I have got to tell you, you have to do it right. That is what they do. I am Kevin Price and let‘s talk a little bit about what is going on in the political process, coming up next on The Price of Business CNN650. Scroll To request more information about any of our sales training, negotiation training, presentation training or other training solutions, click here Contact Info Contact us for questions about any of our products or services to help us serve you better. Address: 10333 Richmond Ave Houston, Texas, 77042 Phone: 713-627-7700 Fax: 713-587-2051 Email: info@bakercommunications.com Training CRM Adoption Customer Service Training Essential Training Management Training Negotiation Training Presentation Training Sales Training Public Workshops About Us About Us Testimonials News & Press Employment Delivery Methods Baker Blog Events Contact Us Baker Communications Inc. Houston, Texas. © 1996-2016.