Are You Focused on Results Generating Activities?
Not another virtual meeting!
How many times a day do you think that?
How can you get any significant work done if all you are doing is attending virtual meetings and managing endless emails?
As a sales leader, you are in the most challenging role in the organization. Even though your customers and the selling environment have changed, you are still responsible for delivering sales results.
You have successfully adapted to working from home and using technology as your primary mode of communication. However, this technology takes you away from what is critical – delivering on your sales objectives.
With the added challenges your reps face with adapting and mastering virtual selling, your primary goal is to be focused on helping them succeed.
There are three fundamental pillars of sales management that you need to focus on, which will help you succeed in any crisis. It starts with doing the basics exceptionally well.
How many times do you hear a sports coach whose team is losing and facing adversity say to the team that they need to go back to the basics?
Fundamentals for Generating Results
Doing the basics well helps to accelerate results. These skills become even more relevant during the COVID crisis. To adapt your team to change these three fundamental skills/behaviours are essential:
- Leading your team
- Creating a performance culture
- Being hyper-focused
To be a great leader and create a performance culture, you need to be hyper-focused. If you are too busy doing tasks that don’t contribute to being a better leader or building a performance culture, you are not doing your job.
Many sales leaders I have spoken with are not focused on the fundamentals. They get stuck in endless virtual meetings. They are so overly concerned about keeping their salespeople engaged that they fail to lead/coach them and have backed off on holding their reps accountable.
Results Generating Activities
They have lost control of their calendars and are getting sucked into busy work.
One of the keys to ensuring that you can be focused is gaining control of your calendar. It is more than time management. Gaining control of your calendar means:
- Determining your results generating activities and your time-sucking activities
- Identifying how much time you spend on results generating activities and time-sucking activities
- Blocking time each week to focus on results generating activities
- Avoiding/eliminating time spent on time-sucking activities
- Track how many hours you focus on results generating activities and time-sucking activities to shift your time to results generating activities
What you do and what you focus on directly impact your results. The one resource that you have that is finite is your time. You can never get more time in a day.
Conclusion:
It seems simple, but it is easy to lose focus and lose control of your most important resource, your time. The COVID crisis demands that you focus your time leading your team and creating a performance culture.
Top sales leaders understand that not all meetings/activities are created equally.
Saying no to TSAs is fundamental in gaining control of your time and focusing your efforts and energy on RGAs, essential in achieving your objectives.
