There is no such thing as “time management.” Here is my take on the myth. It’s a very practical analysis that leads me to my strong conviction.

How many hours in the day do you have? How many minutes in those hours? How many seconds in those hours?  All told the answers are 24 hours, 60 minutes to an hour (1,440 minutes in the day), 60 seconds (86,400 seconds in a day, 31,449,600 seconds in a year)!  I dare you to speed time up, slow it down or stop it!  You can’t.  So how can anyone in their right mind call any program or concept “Time Management?

* I am not the only one in the sales professional development field that believes time management is a myth.  See the resources at the end of this post for more information on debunking the myth of time management.

So, if you can’t manage it, what is the solution to figuring how to avoid having more to do than the time you have to do it?  The obvious solution is this:

Do a better job of managing the time you have

In order to do that, it is helpful to understand what could be causing the lack of self-management that leads to insufficient sales behaviors and prospecting. You might have a substantial revenue flow from the business you already have so therefore lack the motivation. Some salespeople make excuses and blame service or account management for their own lack of self-management. Could also be that you have a fear of rejection.  Let’s face it, none of us like to be told ‘no’. We find that many salespeople lack an effective phone approach, so avoid doing the activity. And finally, many have a need for approval, which is when a salesperson would rather do an activity that is easy and gratifying, than face the difficult job of prospecting and calling sales prospects. Does any of that sound familiar to you?

Here are some Rules to help you manage the time you have:

• Don’t make excuses for your inability to allocate time for prospecting
• Learn to discern the difference between ‘pay’ and ‘no pay’ activities and spend at least 33% of your time on ‘pay activities’.
• Use time blocking to identify your pay activities and then use time blocking in your calendar application. (You should know at least 30 days in advance what activity you will be doing at 2:00 on a Thursday). 
• Be effective with people and efficient with things
  • Stop trying to have ‘quick meetings’
  • Start scheduling the appropriate amount of time with cushion on both sides of EVERY meeting you schedule
  • Embrace technology designed to help you become more efficient at communicating, scheduling, and managing your practice.

Tactics to help you:

• Time blocking: Use your calendar app as a true self management application instead of an appointment placeholder.  If I where to look at your calendar I should see, in addition to appointments, time blocked off for:
  • Your personal time
  • Your planning time
  • Time for pro-active, intentional prospecting
  • Administrative work
  • Internal meetings
  • Lunch meetings – networking activities
  • Sales appointments
  • Appointment preparation; pre calls, post calls, and 1 on 1 coaching for skill improvement
  • Research
  • Putting out fires

This is what it looks like:

• Discernment: To help you discern between the two boxes on the left side of the matrix above, you must ask yourself these three questions every time you are tempted to sacrifice your sales prospecting time in order to get something else done that has popped up in your day to distract you.
• If I don’t do this RIGHT NOW…

1. Will someone die or become seriously injured, ill or be in jeopardy?
2. Will I lose the client?
3. Will I lose my job?

How likely is it that you will answer yes to any of those questions?  Not likely.  So, your challenge then is to be comfortable delaying your response instead of delaying your go to activity – prospecting.

*Additional resources debunking the time management theory.

• The Enterprisers Project.  Need more convincing? Keep reading
• Forbes article 10 myths of time management
• Entrepreneur 5-time management myths that affect your workplace productivity
• Understanding the Sales Force What do Sales Managers Do with Their Time?

I will have to agree to disagree with Richard Carlson, Author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. My view is that the little and or small things do matter and often they matter a great deal.

We have a newborn in our family. Born July 1^st 2022, she came into the world just over 7 pounds. The parents knew in advance that their child would be born with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). With that came the understanding of the complications at birth and the lifelong disease associated with CF. You see, they already have 1 child with CF.

The baby was in the hospital for 5 weeks due to complications with her digestive tract issue, not uncommon with CF patients as they often don’t produce the enzymes to process protein and fat and as a result don’t ‘poop’. That is a problem.

The baby had to gain a defined amount of weight a day for a rolling number of consecutive days before they would release her to go home. That amount is 30 grams a day. I don’t convert easily from the metric system to the decimal system, so I had to look it up.  28.3495 grams equals 1 ounce. 1 ounce is .0003125% of my total body weight (200 lbs). A very small amount I think we would all agree.

So how important is the small stuff? Ask the parents, and they will tell you that day in and day out that while they waited to bring her home from the hospital, it was not such a small thing.

Another example to consider: The diameter of the moon is approximately 2,158 miles.  If the NASA scientist missed the calculation to moon landing site by just 1 degree, the Apollo 11 moon landing would have missed the landing site by: 

What does this have to do with selling? Everything. Understand I am a salesperson that happens to sell sales growth training and development programs to community banks, insurance brokerage agencies and investment advisory firms. I came from a background of recruiting and selling young athletes to come to our campuses at UConn, the University of Cincinnati, and Iowa State University. I sold Nautilus exercise equipment and life insurance.

The lessons of small stuff didn’t hit me until I got into the insurance business and had to track my weekly sales activity in my success manual. I didn’t think it was that important, it was a pain in my backside to report this every week to my manager Bob and when I didn’t hit my numbers, I just made them up to keep Bob off my back. 

If you are reading this and you are an experienced and successful banker, insurance agent or advisor you can relate to this especially if you are one of our clients and have been introduced to the manager’s extraordinary discussion, the success formula, and huddles (video). You probably think it’s a waste of time and why does missing my call number, or my conversion number really matter? The graphic below shows you how much it matters.

The quarterly plan called for approximately 3.38 calls per day over the period of 1 quarter / 65 working days. If you miss that mark by just 10%, assumed conversion rate of outreaches is 18% instead of 20% and, your average size loan is 2,025,000 and finally you don’t renew all of your current 20,000,000 portfolio you end up at 88% of your goal!

So, the little things do matter and if you end up with a couple of little things not adding up, you miss the Big thing. Your personal goal!

(Personal Note: As of this writing the baby continues to grow, their oldest is almost 2 going on 5, you would never know she has CF. Mom and Dad are juggling what life has sent their way. They really do appreciate the small things.)

I know you have heard it before.  You know, the line that goes like this “if you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you have always gotten.”  As a coach, the most development I have seen in salespeople comes when they alone decide enough is enough which leads them to make changes.  And sometimes those changes are hard to make.

While there are many aspects that I love about my job, here are three in no particular order: 

1. I have the privilege of working with some incredible companies and some incredible people across the United States.
2. I have the privilege of working alongside a team at Anthony Cole Training Group whose talent is only eclipsed by the quality of their character.
3. I have the privilege of sitting in a front row seat that allows me to coach and watch some of the best salespeople in the world.

 Today’s blog is about #3.

My sense is there are numerous articles and blogs on what great salespeople do…so today I want to flip that coin over and talk about what great salespeople never do.  Perhaps they used to do those things, but at some point, in their sales career they drew a line in the sand and said no more. And those things became habits. They became the habits of sales greatness.

Here are four things great salespeople never do: 

1. They never show up unprepared and simply “wing it” on a sales call. They execute a precall plan where they identify the questions they are going to ask the prospect as well as they questions the prospect may ask them. They tailor the call for resonance by making sure they are talking about issues that are likely to be important to the prospect.
2. They never blame anyone or anything for their lack of success. They don’t blame the economy, the competition, or the marketing department.  They own the outcomes they create.  By the way, that is my preferred definition of the word accountability – owning the outcome that you created.
3. They never compromise the value they bring to the table. They know the value of their firm and they know the value that they bring to the table.  And if the prospect doesn’t see or appreciate that value, then the salesperson simply moves on.
4. They never (and I mean never ever) stop prospecting. It does not matter if they are crushing it or if they are struggling, they keep networking and they keep hunting for new business.  They keep hunting because they know that weak pipelines make cowards of us all.  They know that it is hard to move on to better qualified opportunities if they don’t have those already in the pipeline.

As a salesperson, what are you doing that you should stop doing?  Who knows, you might be just one bad habit away from sales greatness.

We work with many community banks and while the commercial side of the bank usually has some “sales chops”, we often hear from leadership that retail bankers are less comfortable with “selling.” Or they may even avoid that word altogether. We like how the book Go-Givers Sell More positions the process of selling:

• Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first.
• The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
• The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

Retail bankers have an incredible opportunity. They are the front door to the entire bank and even more importantly, they are the key to financial wellness for their clients. So, what happens when your current banking client comes into the branch?  Do your frontline bankers feel influential, authentic and receptive? Creating giving relationships is the core of what is most needed and is what your bankers must develop. To gain more confidence in sales they must ask the pertinent questions, like “How does this savings account contribute to your overall retirement plan?” Selling IS all about the client and how the bank can help them. We have found that when we focus on that aspect of a frontline banker’s role, they are more receptive. Understanding selling is understanding humanity and how people work.

Here are some specific areas that you can focus on when you are coaching your retail bankers that will help them to gain more confidence in sales:

• Help them to stay in the moment – they should not be thinking about what products they can sell.  They need to listen and probe with good, interested questions.
• When they find an area of concern, they should uncover compelling reasons to buy – ask a question like “Why is this home equity loan important to you?”  And…
• They must really listen to the answer and ask more questions about that issue so they have more information and understanding.
• This approach will build trust – the client’s needs are front and center and it is clear the banker wants to help them.
• In order to help, the banker must be able to ask tough questions and that is where courage comes in. If their end goal is always to help the client, asking a question like “Do you have other deposit accounts elsewhere that we could help you with?” should not be that hard.  But it may take practice!
• Good bankers take nothing for granted – meaning they always seek clarity and that means getting your client to talk, not you and…
• They must have an appropriate amount of patience. Again, if the banker’s focus is on giving and helping, they should not need to push! It is more important that through their questions and discussion, the client comes to their own decision on their actions.
• All of these actions, lead to developing strong relationships. And what retail bank does not want more of those!

A final thought on gaining confidence in sales - In life, in banking and in sales, it is always wise to have a healthy skepticism.  It may not work out that this client will take action, so it’s OK if they do not. If your banker has done their best to help and understand the client’s needs (and not push product), then they can move onto the next opportunity. They should continue to give, which is the essence of selling!

It would be great if you could hand a new salesperson a manual, ask them to read it, take a knowledge test and they could successfully begin their job. Selling is a different animal and you will often hear the term “soft skills” in reference to training a salesperson. What are soft skills in sales? Let’s try to demonstrate that with a short example.

Salesperson walks into prospect's office (or enters Zoom room), they greet each other and salesperson says:

“Thanks for seeing me. I know we have many solutions that could help your business.” or

“What could we accomplish today that would make this a great meeting for you?”

Which of these approaches demonstrates a more skilled approach to a sales conversation? We certainly hope that you chose the second. That is just one example, but a salesperson’s ability to deftly open a meeting, ask enough, great questions and really listen are examples of what soft skills are needed in sales.

Since the most important soft skill for us to learn in selling is how to master our ability to ask not just questions but masterful questions, let’s explore that a bit. 

• How do we get information from other people? We ask questions, right? 
• When you ask a question, what kind of question do you ask? Are they technical in nature or for gathering data? 
• Do your questions really probe and make people think?
• Are your questions focused on the prospect’s core business issues or problems or are they about your products?
• Do your questions sometimes make the prospect uncomfortable and do they bring out the real issues?

What about after you ask those questions?  How well do you listen?  I mean, really listen.  How often can you repeat what someone is saying to you?  How often do you take a key word in their answer and use that to phrase your next question or questions? Typically, there are two things going on in most sales conversations.  Salespeople are hearing and not listening.  Secondly, if they are listening, they are listening to themselves instead of their prospect. 

Try this the next time you are in a conversation with someone and you ask them a question.  Really focus on listening. Identify who you are listening to.  Are you making internal statements or creating internal thoughts about their answer?  If you are, then you are listening to yourself.

The Soft Skills of Selling - Asking Questions

It is a universal truth that often in a selling situation; salespeople will not ask the question because they do not want to disqualify a prospect.  Be truthful, hasn’t this happened to you?  The best part about mastering the soft skills of asking questions is that you will become more courageous as you get more comfortable ‘drilling down’ with your conversation.  This will not only help you become better at qualifying your prospects, it will help you clean the deadwood out of your sales pipeline. And that gives you more time for prospecting, the number one job for all salespeople.