The Summa Solstice & Managing Your Sales Time

Today, June 20th, marks the official beginning of astronomical summer with the arrival of the summer solstice.

It becomes the longest day and shortest night of the year, offering maximum daylight hours to pick up the phone and start selling this morning before kicking off the weekend tomorrow that we've all been waiting for since the wicked days of February, the long weeks of March and the last 7 weekends of rain here in New England.  

The Science of Our Longest Day...

The summer solstice occurs when the North Pole is tilted closest toward the Sun, positioning our hemisphere to receive the most direct sunlight possible. At exactly 10:42 AM EDT today, the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky, marking the precise moment of the solstice. This astronomical phenomenon has been celebrated by cultures worldwide for thousands of years, and for good reason...it represents the peak of solar energy. 

The Science of Time and Sales Efficiency!

• As an "A" / "A+" salesperson, you work on average 60-65 hours a week.
• From those 3,120 hours a year, subtract 15% as normal "non-productive" time.
• Reduce that number by 15 days of well-deserved vacation.
• Reduce that number by 10 company holidays and then by 5 sick days a year.
• We're left with 2,352 hours which is our "Available Time" to Sell baseline
• Our collected data for 10 years at the firm shows only 61% of that is going to be spent actually selling (39.7%) or prepping to sell (21.4%), which leaves us with about 1,300 actual selling hours a year assuming that an "A" level salesperson is 90% effective in utilizing their time. 
• That 1,300 number at 90% is relatively direct to achieve assuming you have a customized sales process, quarterly playbooks, CRM fluency, certification, interlaced tech tools and quarterly training sessions.  
• Bottom line:  the average B2B salesperson starts with around 3,000 hours, loses 2/3 of that in non-sales administrative time, non-customer meetings and necessary travel and ends up with 30-35% of prime time to sell.  Our job as professional salespeople is to make sure that we're utilizing that available time scientifically with the best tools, coaching and team training.

Daylight Hours: Your Time Dividend Today

Depending on your location, today offers a generous helping of daylight that won't be matched again until next year. Here in Boston, we'll enjoy approximately 15 hours and 5 minutes of daylight making today both a psychological and physiological boost which extends directly into our physical and mental well-being as we begin our sales day today.  

Have a superb day selling today with nearly 15-19 hours of daylight at your disposal. My recommendation before I hit the phone for an 8:00 sales call today is that you you should take some of that extra sunlight today before you head out for the first non-rainy weekend in 3 months to broadly plan out the next 75 days or so until Labor Day.  

Think about Taking time this summa' to update your Sales playbook!

Think about taking a day out of this Summa' to work with us to tune up...or maybe actually create your first sales playbook.  Our free how-to ebooks for general ideas: 

"Writing the Winning Sales Plan"
"Writing the Winning Business Plan"
"Writing the Winning Marketing Plan"

We facilitate ideas on structure, models, process funnels, productivity tools and how to recruit, hire and onboard the best people.  We're real salesguys who continue to play and coach the game every day.  

Connect with me any time at jack@derbymanagement.com and let's discuss.