Time is an Investment - Maximize your ROI

Business leaders are perpetually evaluating their organization, looking for ways to improving efficiency – they have to in order to maintain/grow profitability. In essence, executives constantly seek to grow earnings and fuel expansion by doing more with less, without sacrificing quality. What does that mean for the associates? Well, they too have to figure out ways to improve their day-to-day productivity.

For us (sales professionals), that means figuring out how to maximize customer contact time, because customer contact is what produces results in our world. How? In short, discipline. We must discipline ourselves to focus our time and energy where we have the biggest opportunity to make an impact. In practical terms, here are some suggestions:
1. Find out where you are wasting your time. Whether we want admit it or not, there is probably some time in everyone’s day that could be better spent. Evaluate your day and fix that.
2. Prioritize ruthlessly. Start each day with a self time management session, prioritizing the tasks for that day. If you have 20 tasks for a given day, how many of them do you truly need to accomplish? Which of them will yield the best results?
3. Learn to delegate. Of those 20 tasks, which of them can someone else do? The front desk, night auditor, coordinator, receptionist? Maximize your resources!
4. Set appointments with yourself. Schedule time to perform your tasks and stick to it!
5. Limit distractions. Don’t let the incessant interruptions that are non-critical distract you from your daily agenda of customer contact priorities. If they are critical, deal with them and get right back your plan.

Sources: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/time-management/WL00048 and http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/timemanagement/a/timemgttips.htm