They remove the stuff that is not going to generate revenue for them, and they clear their calendar for the things that are going to generate revenue.
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Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel kleb Miller, and today we are going to talk about managing your time, which I mean, who doesn't need to do that no matter what your role is, but particularly in sales, when you are living by the quarter, the month, the year, it is really important that you maximize your time on those high valued sales activities. So I have roped John Boney into this conversation today to share his best tips.
How you doing, John, I'm doing great, Rachel, Good to see you again and thanks for having me on the podcast today.
Yes. So John has spent his whole career selling and now he helps organizations with force management and also provide some great words of advice in his trainings for reps who are owning the day to day, so to speak. So, John, let's just start with the mindset that we need to have when we're structuring our day when we're in that quota carrying individual contributor role.
Yeah. So there's so many things when we talked about this topic and I wrote a bunch of things down that came to mind when I think about the mindset of elite sellers and people that operate in that mindset. So for the first part, first and foremost, they operate as an owner or CEO of their territory. Like they have that mindset that they own the territory and they run it like their own business. They treat their time like a finite resource and prioritize activities that drive revenue
and pipeline growth. Some of the key things that they focus on that I've seen over the time that I've been leading salespeople is one their strategic operator, right. They think in terms of territory planning and multi threading and long term account development. They create value. They focus on solving business problems, not just talking about features and functions. They are the owner of their pipeline. They own every stage at the deal cycle and treat pipeline health as
a leading indicator of success. They're very intentional with what they do. Every hour of their day has a purpose, whether it's progressing deals or prospecting or internal alignment which is sometimes forgotten right making sure that we have that internal alignment that needs to take place. They are very proactive versus reactive. They don't wait for things to happen, They make things happen. They have tremendous discipline and focus.
They protect their calendar from distractions and low value tasks. Qualification and discovery is an ongoing event for them. They're always qualifying their opportunities and just going through discovery to ensure if things are changing, they're on top of it and they're aware of it, and they're consistently evaluating their
opportunities while that discovery phase never stops. And the last thing that I would say, and I know I'm given a laundry list of things here, but there's just so much for these elite sellers that kind of make them elite. Quarterly territory planning, they revisit their icps and white space and expansion opportunities and really evaluate that to determine where's their next move, where are they going to go. So the overall mindset that they have is that if it's
not on my calendar, it doesn't exist. They remove the stuff that is not going to generate revenue for them, and they clear their calendar for the things that are going to generate revenue. And that's just a handful more than a handful of things, Rachel, that kind of came to mind when I think about that.
Yeah, they make the news, they don't read the news, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then if I was a sum of everything that you said, I would say it is the ownership of their territory or the area they're working as a business. Right, It's ownership of that, and then it's ownership of their day.
Yeah, ownership of their territory. It's like it's that territory is their own business. They're the CEO and the founder of that business, and they run it that way, and they manage their time and activities as relates to doing everything they can to build that business.
Yeah. That's a great mindset and I think it's something that we can always like reset on, right, And you think we do that, and then you know, we get to we're recording this on a Thursday. He's a Thursday of the week, and all the waves of stuff have come much at you and you've lost ownership of your day or you've lost ownership. So it's a good like reset. Put on a posted note. Take ownership of your territory
and ownership of your day. I think one of the things that is a constant struggle, no matter if you're a new repor or an experienced rep, is like striking that balance between current business, new business, current deals, pipeline generation. I mean, it's easy to let the PG fall by the wayside, particularly if you're busy working current deals. So how did you strike that balance, John, when you were in sales? How do you recommend others stand top of it?
Yeah? So what I did and what I recommend to others is this is where I think the elite sellers really shine, right. They treat PG as a non negotiable. It is not optional. It is something that they do all the time. So the strategies to balance PG to active deals, they have set times. They block sixty to ninety minutes like I would block sixty to ninety minutes or pipeline generation before the day gets reactive, right, So
first thing in the morning, I'm doing my pipeline. Another thing that I would do is I would do pipeline generation sprints, short focus burts of time that I would do pipeline thirty minutes of LinkedIn outreach as an example, I would set weekly pipeline generation goals, a number of touches, meetings that were booked, new contacts that were added. And the accountability that I would use around that, and I recommend to the people that I would lead is having
peer check ins or manager check in. Sometimes it's a lot easier to do with peers. Sometimes you get that real feedback from peers when you have the right team, environment or manager to review it and keep it top of mind. And I was proactive with that as a seller, and I was proactive with that as a sales leader.
That accountability check in and elite sellers they really know that pipeline generation today is quota protection for tomorrow, and so that is kind of the mindset and some of the things that you can do to really make sure it stays top of mind. You got to block that time that goes back to the you got to own your calendar. And if you don't own your calendar, then other things are going to infiltrate into that space, and then pipeline will be one of those things that goes
off to the wayside. Elite sellers don't let that happen.
I love that quota protection. That's a good mindset to have too. Right, you mentioned being proactive, and I know that we talk about being proactive in planning your day, and you talked about it at the top of what those elite sellers do elite behaviors. As a manager, I mean, how many times have we said I'd like you to be more proactive?
Right?
Okay, but what does that mean? So how do you coach reps to be proactive and avoid reactive selling for lack of yeah.
Well, productive planning. In my opinion, it's the foundation of consistent performance. You know. It allows that rep to anticipate objections and stakeholder needs. It aligns internal resources before there's a problem or challenge, and allows you to stay ahead
of renewal or expansion opportunities. So when you're coaching to avoid that reactive selling mindset, you've got to have weekly planning sessions, right, it helps the reps map out the week with pipeline generation, deal strategy, preparation, all things that go into your week, deal reviews, right with a forward looking lens on those deal reviews, focusing on the next steps, the gaps, the stakeholders, the engagement, leveraging medic as an
example to do that, pipeline health check ins. We just talked about that a couple of minutes ago, about making sure that you're having these health checks on your pipeline, whether it's peer or leader led ensuring the reps that aren't just working on what's hot, but they're building what's next, knowing what's coming down the pipe for what's next. And then the last thing I would say is scenario planning.
What if this deal stalls, what do I do? What's the backup plan going to be for the pipeline generation? In other words, do I have something that can fill the gap if this thing stalls. There's nothing more frustrating as a REP and as a leader that you've got your quota, you've got your forecast, and then all of
a sudden the deal stalls. You miss something in the qualification of the opportunity and your pipeline isn't strong enough that you can fill that gap with another opportunity, And so you've got to be thinking, what if this does stall, what is the backup plan? What am I going to
be able to fill that gap with? So those are again some of the planning sessions, deal reviews, health checks on your pipeline, and scenario planning, or just a handful of things that you know as we're thinking about how to get out of that reactive selling stage.
Always forward thinking, Yeah, and some great questions to ask ourselves as we're in that process. If I am a manager and I see my people struggling with this, you gave some good tips here, But I'd like to talk a little bit about micromanaging, right, because if you are constantly asking about like in the weeks with your people, it can almost appear like you're overbearing your micro managing. So as a manager, how can I add value? How can I be an asset to my team without micromanaging their day?
Yeah, really good question, and it's such a big topic. We could probably have a call just on this topic alone if we haven't already.
Rachel Oh next podcast.
Yeah, Zach, the key is the coach, not control, And I think we fall into this mindset because of the pressures that we're all under as sales leaders to try to control the situation, and that we've got to coach on it. And so the first thing I'll say is, and this is where the topic can get bigger and bigger and bigger. We've got to take the time to understand what is the value we can provide to that account executive, what's important to them, just like we do
with our customers. We've got to provide value versus talking about features and functions. What's going to be valuable in rachel. Use you as example, if we're going to have a session together, what is the thing that's going to be most important for you? How are you going to see value out of this? Because it's different for each person, so it's critical to understand what is the value What does this person need or want from me that I
can help them get there? And once we do that, we can then help the reps prioritize on impact not urgency. Where's the biggest impact that we're going to make. And we can do that by offering different frameworks for time management, all all kinds of matrixes that are out there and how do we make sure we're getting pipeline generation and
build blocks. They're important again, understanding what is going to be the most critical thing for each individual and finding out where their value is that we're going to get from this. And I think a couple other things that I would share with this is we've got a model to behavior, right, what is my own calendar strategy or what pipeline generation rituals have I used before? Or account
methodologies that I've used before. And the last thing is, and this is so important, because we're so good, we get we're just ingrained with catching people doing the wrong thing. We got to catch people doing the right thing. Celebrate the reps who are demonstrating strong planning habits right, Celebrate that and expose that to other people, and expose them to other people. So by creating some of that accountability,
doing it without this tremendous pressure. Everybody's got pressure on them right now with trying to generate the revenue or trying to generate more pipeline, trying to hit the numbers that they need to hit. So having things like lightweight check ins, what's your pipeline generation focused for the week, encourage peer sharing, let the reps learn from each other's workflows and how they're using some of the things that
they have. The strategic deal reviews we mentioned before focused on medic and shareholder mapping and next steps and close plans in order to help them get there. And rather than asking did you do your pipeline generation this week, ask them the you know something different, like walk me through your pipeline pipeline generation plan. Have them explain it to you, just like we want the customer and explain to us what's their strategy, Where are they going? Where
do they want to be when they get somewhere. Try to eliminate some of the internal meetings that we set as leaders. Oh gosh, right, Like are there meetings that we're having that could be communicated via email or slack? We don't have to have a meeting just to have a meeting. And then, you know, leverage your enablement team to provide the right templates and sequences and account plans. And I'll say it again, celebrate the wins, the small wins, not just the big they want a deal, they want
an account, but the small wins. They moved it to the next stage. They got the meeting that they were trying to get so on and so forth, those behaviors will go a long way.
I think that's a great takeaway. Celebrate the wins. But I love the other concept you brought up about lightweight check ins. Right just picking up the phone saying hey, what's going on? What can I help you with? How's your pipeline generation going this week? It comes from a place of I want to help rather than have you generated pipeline this week? Like those light check ins can give you the information you need to coach effectively, but without seeming overbearing.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I like to think of this as like our role as sales leaders. One is the coach and develop the people around us. But to create an environment where when we're talking about something like planning, it's valued and rewarded, not enforced. And that's a different mindset, right. Enforcing it feels micromanagy, and we've set it over and over again. People don't want to be told what to do, but they don't want to be led that art of persuasion.
And so if we can take a concept like planning and make it value and rewarded, then people are gonna be more inclined to want.
To follow along and do that exactly, John Boney, great bottom line, Thank you for joining me for this conversation today.
Thank you for having me once again. I appreciate it. Look forward to the next one.
Awesome. Yes, and we're going to do it on micromanaging. I already wrote it down, all right. Thank you, John, and thank you to all of you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast.
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