MAXIMIZING YOUR MINUTES
Proactive vs. Reactive: Is email controlling you?
Time management is a crucial basic skill to achieve sales success. The ultimate goal is to fill your day with high pay-off activities that are building connections and filling your pipeline. Too often salespeople unknowingly let valuable time get lost forever which results in lost sales.
Time to be proactive and take back control of your in-box. Are your emails out of control?
Did you know?
- 144.8 billion emails are sent daily
- An Average person receives 416 emails/month
- An average person spends 28% of their day looking at their inbox
- An average person deems 14% of the emails they receive as “important” or “must read immediately”
Is 28% of your time spent reading and responding to emails? This could mean that you are spending ¼ of your day looking at email! That could be up to 2 hours per day during prime selling hours! Of course, email is a tool that is used for selling and some of that is selling time. However, I can bet that a lot of that time is handling issues instead of building relationships toward selling.
Here are 6 tips to put you back in control of your in-box:
- Do not keep your email consistently open: Studies show that the most productive people schedule time within their day to check email. Set aside specific time frames through-out your day to check your email.
- Keep focused on your present task: Turn off email notifications that my pop-up through-out the day. It instantly breaks the focus of your brain on what you are doing. Communicate well the times that you deal with email so that you set proper expectations about response times. Be assertive and enforce your boundaries. If you check email at the beginning of your day, around lunch time and at the end in 15 minute increments. This is plenty of time to still be communicating effectively.
- Quickly Make Decisions About Emails: When you check your email, make quick decisions about each one. To Dos, Calendar Events, Research, or Trash – simplify! Then move on.
- Put an Auto-Response on your email: We live in an age where people expect us to respond immediately. However, that breaks up our day and takes us out of our zone from the productive activity at hand. People want communication so set up an auto response that thanks them from reaching out to you and that you will be checking your email between 12 – 1pm and from 4:30 – 5:30pm. If this is an emergency they can contact you on your cell phone. Otherwise, expect a response between the times above. Take back your life. Set proper expectations.
- Organize email folders: Organize folders for storing emails by projects or clients. Quickly move in-active emails and files from that area to keep your organization clean and up to date.
- Keep emails short and concise: Keep your own emails as brief as possible. Be concise and to the point. This shows respect for the time of others as well as your own time. It also will encourage a quick reply from the recipient.
Apply these quick tips and see how much time you can add back to your day!