One study projected that within 2 to 3 years, over 10.8 million Americans would be working remotely, or at least part-remotely. The remote and hybrid work revolution has tremendously impacted workers’ autonomy, emphasizing the need for more employees to learn time management skills.
So, how can you improve your time management skills?
Keep reading for the ultimate guide to time management. This guide will give you 11 hacks to manage your time more effectively and ensure high productivity levels.
How Has Time Management Changed Since the Beginning of The Pandemic?
The pandemic caused a dramatic shift in how companies manage their workforce. The employee now has more autonomy in their working day, with more responsibility regarding time management.
These shifts have occurred due to the rise in remote, hybrid, and flexible working. The pandemic caused many businesses to shift towards cloud-based tools and technologies to facilitate remote working and keep daily business operations running during lockdowns.
For sales reps, this means an increased emphasis on managing time more effectively, taking control of your workload, and prioritizing tasks effectively. Working remotely or in a hybrid work model allows you more flexibility regarding your working hours and when you choose to work in the office. However, with this flexibility comes the need to consider time management strategies and assume more responsibility for your workload.
How to Manage Your Time More Effectively as a Sales Rep? | 11 Best Tips
Here are some best practices, tips, and tricks to help you manage your time more effectively as a sales rep.
1. Use Workflow Management Software
Having a clear picture of your daily responsibilities goes a long way in ensuring you manage your time effectively. At Growth Hackers, when we implemented a workflow management tool for a software development sales team, we improved task visibility and prioritization across sales reps, increasing lead-to-close time drastically.
Workflow management software presents you with a dashboard containing all your daily tasks, and you can mark their progress as you go. You can also establish which tasks are a priority and have more clarity when reviewing your schedule for the day.
2. Use Time Management Software and Time Tracking Tools
Time management software and time tracking tools can be highly beneficial to help you understand how well your current time management is performing and where most of your time is going.
Since your primary goal as a sales rep should be generating leads, you need to ensure that your time isn’t consumed with researching leads or performing administrative tasks. One of the best ways to see how effectively you’re spending your working hours is to implement time-tracking software, which will show you how long you’re working on each task throughout the day.
Once you have determined where you might be spending too much time, you can begin to configure a time management strategy that better suits you and increases your productivity. At Growth Hackers, we treat time tracking like a fitness tracker for productivity, and for a sales team at one of our B2B SaaS clients, this visibility helped cut wasted effort and improve lead-focused work time.
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3. Use a Single Cloud-Based File System
If you don’t know where your essential files are and can’t find them across your many file storage platforms, this will eat away at your time.
To ensure you always have the files you need at hand to perform daily operations, consider using a single cloud-based file platform to house all of the documents you need.
With a cloud-based filing system, you can effortlessly search through your entire file storage to find the files you need without searching. And eliminating data silos and storing all your information in one place will save you time searching on different platforms to find your file.
4. Identify Which Leads Will Likely Bring ROI
As a sales representative, you’ll know by now that you can only generate leads from a low percentage of your prospective clients. At Growth Hackers, we worked with a sales team from one of our accounting and bookkeeping clients that was chasing every inbound lead equally, and after introducing a structured priority system based on intent signals, they stopped wasting effort on unqualified prospects and increased ROI from closed deals.
So, why would you waste time on leads that don’t appear to be offering ROI? Learning to prioritize your more promising leads will help you to save a massive amount of wasted time.
If you’re putting time and energy into pursuing unqualified leads, you’re not performing your job as efficiently as possible. So, create a priority system for your leads, and put more energy into your qualified leads to get better ROI on your time.
5. Automate Repetitive Lead Tasks
In addition to prioritizing your leads, automate repetitive tasks by categorizing your information and creating protocols for handling each lead type. At Growth Hackers, we helped a sales organization move from manually processing every lead interaction to fully automated repetitive task workflows, resulting in a huge boost in productivity and faster lead response times.
Although each lead may have its differences, you can categorize them to save time and follow structured guidelines for each information type – saving you valuable time. Working with a productivity coach can do wonders in the case. He/she will be able to share on how to use AI to automate your repetitive tasks.
6. Create Batches for Similar Tasks
If you’re performing your CRM updates and email follow-ups between calls, this might not be the most efficient way to structure your workday. Try batching together similar tasks and allocating time slots for dealing with these tasks. This way, you can ensure an uninterrupted call time and time set aside for CRM duties.
At Growth Hackers, when we introduced task batching for a sales team at a AI startup juggling CRM updates and outreach, we helped them reduce context switching and increase productive call time, improving overall pipeline efficiency.
7. Upskill your Employees
You must ensure your employees have autonomy regarding improving time management and productivity in your business. If your employees consistently depend on their team leaders, waiting for approval and task assignment to carry out their daily duties, their time management will be less efficient. By upskilling your employees, you can ensure that they can manage their workload and set their schedule.
This way, your employees will be free to overachieve and surpass their daily requirements on days when their productivity is up. You can use training tools and learning management systems to upskill your employees. Your employees can access CPD and progress their knowledge – which will benefit the whole team.
8. Provide Time Limits for Tasks
You can hold your employees accountable in your time management strategy by implementing time limits for tasks. Your employees will have a clear understanding of your expectations, and they will need to complete the job before the deadline. Provide time limits for tasks to ensure employees feel a sense of urgency. You can set deadlines or create timeframes for each task on your workflow dashboard.
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9. Create Incentive Schemes
Improved time management improves efficiency and productivity. By investing in employee benefit schemes, you can ensure that your employees have incentives to perform well. They can receive awards and acknowledgments for their hard work on the employee benefits platform and tokens that give them discounts at their favorite stores.
At Growth Hackers, we treat incentive schemes like fuel for performance engines, and for a sales team at a tech company, we helped them add structured rewards, which increased motivation and boosted productivity efficiency. PerkBox is an excellent example of an accessible employee benefits scheme. If employee motivation is lacking, time management and productivity will suffer also.
10. Implement Stress Management Practices
One of the biggest factors affecting productivity is stress. If your employees are stressed or burnt out, they will feel less in control of their time management. To address this, you can implement stress management strategies. Checking in with your employees’ stress levels regularly can help you to take a proactive approach, implementing wellness events and seminars to provide your employees with the tools they need to manage stress and maintain productivity.
You can provide stress management support by implementing stress management competency tests, indicating how well your employees manage their stress at work. This will identify the employees needing extra support, allowing your HR team to work with them to improve their time management, stress, and job satisfaction.
11. Protecting your Data
Not only do you want to monitor sales efficiency metrics, you also want to make sure your data is safe and secured. If you fall victim to a cybersecurity attack, you must spend time reaching out to customers and letting them know of the breach. This could take up a significant portion of your time. To prevent this, consider investing in cybersecurity software that keeps your data private. Protecting your data goes a long way in preserving your time for more critical tasks.
It would help if you also consider protecting your data in containers from a physical security standpoint. If someone can gain access to your sensitive files and computer, this could cause a security breach. Leveraging new surveillance technologies such as AI video analytics and cloud-based video security can help your team stay agile against physical security threats. So, protect yourself from both a physical and cyber point of view.
Another way to secure your data is to invest in cybersecurity awareness training for your employees. Here are some of the essential areas this training should cover:
- Spotting phishing scams: phishing and attempts to harvest critical information from your company can lead to devastating cybersecurity breaches if your team cannot spot them.
- Setting solid passwords: if your employees select weak or easily-guessed passwords, your client data will be vulnerable. Training your employees on the importance of password strength will help to mitigate this risk.
- Performing software updates: your staff must only access critical company data using fully-updated devices. Older software versions often contain security loopholes that a cyber attacker might exploit.
A cybersecurity attack could lead to wasted time, losses, and legal issues for your business, which is why cybersecurity is essential to your time management strategy. At Growth Hackers, we helped an enterprise move from reactive, high-risk data handling to a proactive cybersecurity and awareness system, which reduced security threats and improved overall productivity protection.
Final Words on Having Your Sales Reps Being More Productive Thanks to Efficient Time Management
Time management is essential for any sales rep in the post-pandemic era. The hybrid and remote work revolution has put more onus on employees to manage their workload and allocate their time to more tasks. The bonus? You get more control over how you structure your day, and you can find work patterns and time management strategies that best suit your work style.
Growth Hackers is an experienced small business marketing agency helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners and sales reps apply our time management hacks, increase their productivity, generate qualified leads, optimize their conversion rate, gather and analyze data analytics, acquire and retain users and increase sales.
We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
