PPB February 2018

Manage Your Precious Time. It’s an old saying, but it’s true: everybody gets the same 24 hours in a day, but some people simply do a better job managing their hours to get more done. What makes a difference to Bosworth is time blocking and delegating everything that is not a good fit for her expertise. “Too many of us are perfectionists and expect the same from other people,” she says. “Only strive for 80 percent from people who work for you; never expect more than 60 percent. One hundred percent is overkill.” Distributor owner Haar also believes in keeping it real. “Some days I feel like I’m constantly putting out fires and spending hours being reactive,” she says. “I find that the more my team and I proactively stay on top of requests for information and order status updates, the smoother things go.” Another Proforma distributor once advised her to write notes for order entry and next steps that she leaves for her team with the clear intention of helping those teammates understand the process for that particular project. “That stuck with me,” she says. “I try to delegate as many of those steps as possible once an order is in progress so I can focus time on building the business and prospecting. Spending a little time up front to give quality direction saves a lot of back- and-forth time with production facilities and even clients.” She also offers these ideas: keep a standing Monday morning teammeeting on the calendar to stay ahead of open orders and projects in the pipeline, maintain a shared calendar with teammembers to plan meetings and calls efficiently and keep a running Google Sheet on all open orders with color coded cells assigned to each teammember. Distributor owner Mealor also gains efficiencies by thinking through his day the day before—where he will be and looking at patterns so he’s not driving from one end of town to another and back. He tries to line up his appointments and meetings and time block his day. He keeps an eye on the big picture to help control his daily activities. “I have a big picture productivity planner—the idea is to find three big-picture things I am trying to get accomplished in the next six or 24 months. Below that, I itemize what I need to do to achieve each objective. This way I can ask, ‘Is the activity I’m doing right now relevant to my goal?’” From a task perspective, PCNA’s Kaufmann works in time blocks, assigning different elements of the job per block. For example: presentations, one-on-one meetings, end-user sessions, time to be proactive and time to be reactive. “I use blocks rather than hours or minutes because I neither want to be limited by the clock nor feel the need to stretch out a task to fit into a time frame,” he says. “I then fill those blocks based on dollar value, knowing how much a given end user, project or response can return.” For SAGE’s Cook, productivity is all about planning her day. “Walking into my office with a game plan and knowing what needs to be done ahead of time helps keep me on track and focused. I also find that it helps to deal with the things that I might be dreading or not excited about.” By getting into “doing” what needs to be done and not just thinking about it, she’s able to get those things knocked out. Also, she does not want to be controlled by her email inbox. “It’s easy to see an email come through and get distracted,” she says. “The urge to stop what I am doing to respond can be disruptive to what I need to get done. I try to block out times throughout the day to get through emails. This way, I am being proactive, not reactive.” When it comes to handling routine questions from clients, Seamount creates a 6 Jacque Cook, CAS Senior lead account executive SAGE “Walking into my office with a game plan and knowing what needs to be done ahead of time helps keep me on track and focused.” Tips and Techniques of Top Sellers | FEATURE | FEBRUARY 2018 | 47