Many of you in the United States are not working today because it is Memorial Day. Enjoy the holiday!
I wanted to be sure, though, to put a post out here for all of our readers from other countries (as well as to give U.S. salespeople something to read when they return on Tuesday.)
If you’re one of the many salespeople who spends Monday morning taking care of paperwork and finishing the expense report from the previous week, you should re-think that!
I get very passionate about this and here is why:
Many times I’ll get calls or emails from salespeople complaining about their poor results and stating how their poor results are due to any one of a number of reasons (each of which is outside of their control).
I stop them as quickly as possible and ask them how they lay out their week.
Almost without exception, they say how they spend Mondays — at least Monday mornings — doing paperwork. The paperwork includes reports that are due, updates on numbers, expense reports, etc.
Excuse me, but if I spent the start of my week doing that kind of work, I’d have lousy results and lousy sales motivation too.
How do you prevent it? Simple. You do the paperwork Friday late in the afternoon or sometime over the weekend.
Don’t argue with me about using your weekend. I’m serious, because not only are you using valuable time on Monday doing non-sales activities, but the tasks you are doing are simply not very motivating.
Think about it.
You’re sitting at computer knocking out one update after another, complaining the entire time about the amount of paperwork you have to do, and then the next moment you’re out selling?
Something is not right!
There is no way you’re going to be effective selling immediately after doing some lame paperwork.
If you’re a sales manager and you’re reading this, then let me give you a quick way to stop it.
Simply require all expense reports, paperwork, etc. must be turned in by Saturday night or some other time frame that does not allow salespeople to do it on a Monday.
Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
