A Model Day for Success in Sales

Why You Need a Model Day for Success and How to Get Started

When offering sales and marketing support for expansion stage management teams, the most common topic addressed is how to keep team members focused.  Establishing and maintaining focus in the workplace is essential for getting tasks done—without it, team members become distracted, frustrated, unproductive and totally haphazard.

Some teams thrive in unstructured work environments.  Google, for instance, has a very loose work configuration and is still considered one of the best places to work.  But not every company can be like Google and still succeed—other companies, especially those in the expansion stage, need boundaries in order to maintain efficiency.

To keep team members focused, I like to create a Model Day for Success.

What’s a Model Day for Success?

A Model Day for Success is the pinnacle of a well-structured day for your sales team—and perhaps even your entire organization.  Model Days set the standard for how to delegate and categorize activities to promote productivity.

Good time management skills are essential for a constructive workforce.  A common ailment of sales teams is they allow themselves to be so consumed with activities—some of them trivial—and fail to prospect and continually build a fresh pipeline of opportunities for upcoming months and quarters.  If a salesperson falls so far behind in their work, even simple tasks that used to be accomplished with the greatest of ease can become cumbersome.

Proactive vs. Reactive

There are two types of approaches to work: proactive and reactive.  Being proactive is the best way to accomplish your goals.  Instead of acting in response to a last-minute task or something you’ve put off in favor of other goals, being proactive means you’re tackling issues before they become issues.  Being reactive is the opposite—you’re merely reacting to events, backlogs and tasks, and failing to look forward.

As negative as being reactive sounds, it’s an inherent element to your workday, and you need to find a balance of the two.

Below is a list of common proactive and reactive activities.  Separating daily tasks into these categories will assure success and allow individuals to be purposeful in the execution of their jobs.

Proactive activities

• Campaigns: Create campaigns for outbound calling and emailing to prospects and current customers in support of sales and recruiting.
• Target Account Penetration: Profile and make outbound calls to prospects from target partner and account lists.

Reactive activities

• Lead management and Inbound Opportunities: Reviewing inbound opportunities, retrieving and reviewing voicemail and incoming e-mails
• Scheduled Activities: including scheduled calls, demonstrations, appointments, technical conference calls, proposal and ROI development, preparation for presentations
• General Follow Up and Fulfillment: Providing literature, white papers, etc. to prospects
• Communicating with Internal and External Sales Resources
• Reviewing Opportunity Assessments and Devising Account Strategies
• Administrative Work

An Ideal Schedule

Now that you have an idea of what needs to be done—and what needs to be restructured—here’s a sample schedule for how your business day will look.  All times coincide with the time zone for the territory assigned.

• 8am to 8:30am – Prepare for the day (personal organization and preparedness)
• 8:30am to 9am – Reactive activities
• 9am to 11am – Proactive activities
• 11am to 12pm – Reactive activities
• 12pm to 1pm – Lunch
• 1pm to 3pm – Reactive activities
• 3pm to 4pm – Proactive activities
• 4pm to 5pm – Reactive activities
• 5:30pm to 6pm – Preparation for next day (personal organization and preparedness)

How to Implement a Model Day for Success

In order for a Model Day for Success to be intriguing to your sales force and also be productive, it needs to be managed as a directional tool.  If you micromanage your Day, the results aren’t optimal, as micro-managing removes the independent spontaneity crucial for a positive experience.

Micromanagement leads to employee disengagement—a state of distance from one’s work.  “A disengaged employee puts in time but little else, and his apathy affects not only his own productivity but that of his colleagues.  Because a consistent pattern of micromanagement tells an employee you don’t trust his work or his judgment, it is a major factor in triggering disengagement,” reports the Harvard Business Review.

Inventing new workplace routines is a difficult process often met with resistance and frustration.  Your team needs to naturally work their way into the new routine—they cannot be hindered by management’s leash.  Otherwise, they’ll derive no benefits from the exercise and likely never try it again.