Time is your most important resource. You can have the best product at the best price but if you don't have time you have nothing. Today we will start to look at time and how we can use it to get better results.

Most external sales people have an area that they have to manage but how often do you find yourself running around from place to place and when you get to the end of the day feel you have achieved nothing? We can help with this. Today we will explore how to improve the way you manage your time and your area.

Every day you have to meet with customers, handle complaints, phone to make new appointments, sort out the drivers, keep up with the paperwork, handle fifty e-mails and drive hundreds of miles, when do you get the chance to sell? My guess is that you probably spend only 5 to 10 percent of your time actually selling. To double your sales you only need to increase your sales activity by as little as 5%.

We have been working together for over nine months now and you should be ready to go for the big ones. Of course you have already brought in a few big ones but now we are going to concentrate on developing strategies to convert the corporate customers and to do that you need a sales strategy.

The big contracts are more complicated because of the people who tend to be involved in the decision making process. Not only do you have decision makers but you also have influencers and all of these people have to be identified and satisfied if we are going to bring in the business

Developing sales strategies is not complicated. It is simply a matter of deciding where we are now, where we want to be at a given time in the future and the route we want to take to get there. We may also assign some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) along the way to make sure we are on track

The sales pipeline is a structure we use monitor the progress of the sale. This is particular useful for the big contracts and makes sure that everything is done on time. It is also a very useful tool for sales managers to monitor the progress of the sale.

The first half of this section was all about being more effective by managing your time better. By now you should easily have an extra hour or two each day. Think what you can achieve now...  We have also started to look at bringing in the big contracts. The experienced sales people will know that the big ones usually take a little longer to convert but one big one is often worth 100 or more little ones and worth the extra effort.