Time Management & Prioritization

Time Management & Prioritization --

I will keep this post brief in an effort to manage my time during my very busy event season.When I realized it had been a few weeks since my last post, I started thinking about priorities and time management.


Here are the basic rules I follow when determining what my priorities are and what portion of my time I should allocate to them. Tasks are blocked into one of four quadrants. I am certain you can youtube this method of prioritization and find even more information on it. Today, I will talk about how I apply it to a busy sales environment to ensure I stay focused on closing business.

The four quadrants ranked in terms of prioritization are:

Urgent & Important

Important but Not Urgent

Urgent but Not Always Important

Neither Urgent or Important

So you may have guess that the majority of your time should be allocated to the categories of Urgent & Important and Important but Not Urgent. We all know that urgent emails or phone calls come up in the middle of the day that we must respond to. While those tasks must have time allocated to them immediately, they don't necessarily contribute to my bottom-line.

Let me give you some examples of tasks that I put in each category to keep myself on pace to hit my sales goals:




Urgent & Important: Sales Calls or Sales Presentations (Business Generating Activities)

Important but Not Urgent: Follow-up, Lead Generation, Paperwork (Sales Support Activities)
Urgent but Not Important: Answering a quick question for a colleague via email or phone (Activities that do not directly support your sales, but must be dealt with urgently)
Neither Urgent or Important: Breaks or Socializing




Each of these activities have a place in the day-to-day work environment. The key is to keep yourself on track by allocating an appropriate percentage of time to each category. I suggest a rough percentage break down of:

Urgent & Important: 70%
Important but Not Urgent: 15%
Urgent but Not Always Important: 10%
Neither Urgent or Important: 5%

No less than 85% of the average day should be dedicated to either direct or supportive sales tasks. That doesn't mean that you should send a quick thank you note follow-up to a client or connect with a colleague next to the water cooler--those contribute to the overall quality of your work environment and therefore your work attitude. Instead, I suggest you take advantage of a few basic time saving tips to be able to fit 12 hours of activities into an eight hour day.

CLUSTER Cluster similar activities together. For instance, make all of your sales calls from 10-12. Send all of your follow-up emails from 1-2. By keeping similar activities clustered you can focus on a single task, get it finished, and strike it off your to-do list.

PAY ATTENTION to your mental clock: If you notice that from 3-3:30 in the afternoon you have a difficult time focusing on new business phone calls--user that time to instead paperwork. If you find that in the morning you are more energized than in the afternoon---do your sales calls first thing in the morning when your energy is peaking.

CREATE SYSTEMS to handle routine tasks: If you have to repeat the same paperwork process every week--create a system that you can easily replicate. Use the same formula for all documents you save so you can quickly find something. I know this seems obvious, but most people do not naturally create processes/systems. Make sure that you pick one process/system from the beginning and continue to use it throughout the entire tasks.

So these are the basics. I will post again in the future with more of the intricacies of time management, prioritization, goal setting, etc. I hope this introduction helps you stayed focused on your business generation and sales goals even during the busiest times! Please do not hesitate to email at coldcallingmastery@gmail.com if you have any questions.