normal panic of scrunching time to fit everything in
between now and September 3rd. Just wondering, but is
it possible that the whole Einstein equation thing of time
and relativity could be just slightly off for the last two
weeks of August. Don't know, just thinking, but it
might bear looking into. Smart guy. I always like the
manner in which he took complex ideas and explained
them in simple terms that even I can understand:
"When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." -Albert Einstein
After lots of "summer field research" on the beach, somehow, I'll figure out how to compress time during the next couple of weeks (never really needed much sleep anyhow) to enable me to get back into the groove, start showing up again at the office in Boston, realize that no one really missed me, and accelerate at the pace our customers want to accelerate at. Time management get's a bit more complicated since I need to be somewhat coherent on the 4th for my new 35 students at Tufts and 80 at MIT on the 10th. But somehow, it all gets done. Always does since, I regard this time between now and the end of the year as "The 4 Month Quarter". This is the time of year when everything needs to come together perfectly:
As any experienced salesperson or manager focused on their quota and bonus knows, we don't really have 120 days until the end of the year. Subtract...
Figure out your own math, but you're going to come out somewhere between 75-80 days. With that as a baseline, then all you need to do is to figure out is how you're going to enable yourself and your team to Effectively & Efficiently use that time to market and to sell.
As a skill, how would you rank your own personal time management? Very high? Skip to the next bullet. So, so? Consider taking a half day time management seminar on a weekend. There are lots of good programs from companies (who want to sell you stuff) such as Day Timer or Franklin Covey, and it just may be that a few hours spent at one of their retail locations on a Saturday tunes up and refreshes your basic skills.
I'd add to this idea to think about investing weekend time in a couple of hours class at your local Microsoft or Apple store. I just did this for Excel, and it's made a big difference. It's a never-too-old-to-learn thing. Maybe it's not Excel or PowerPoint, but perpahs a short session on app integration would make your life more organized, more manageable and end up saving you time during the week.
For those of us in Sales, this is the perfect time of year to do a tools inventory, place in easy-to-find locations those tools that we constantly use, sharpen those that need it, re-oil those that are bit rusty and generally take an assessment of what we need for the next 77 days. The equation that you want to do here is one of balancing Effort against Impact.
Pick just three things where you can gain short term enablement clout for you and your team during the month of September and hone those specific tools whether they're training or product skills. This activity is guaranteed to evidence a high ROI when it comes down to measuring your own performance against your Q4 quota or year-end bonus. Whatever ideas you chose, just focus on answering these simple questions...relative (the Einstein thing again) to 75 days.
and Effectivity, and, more importantly, as a
manager, you're wondering what to do about it, join
us at our upcoming October Sales Management Boot
Camp, where you'll have the opportunity of becoming
deeply engrained in the strategies and hands-on, real-
time implementation tactics of optimizing and enabling your sales team.
Good Selling!
During our upcoming 2013 Sales Management Boot Camp, we'll talk a lot about the best sales planning practices of...
-Sales Enablement
-Creating Value Propositions
-Hiring & Retaining the very best salespeople...plus many more topics
Late Sunday afternoon, October 6th through Tuesday afternoon, October 8th at the MIT Endicott House. Six years, 350+ highly satisfied graduates!