We are not allowed to read books, use the computer/internet/mobile phones or eat at our stations. I seem to spend a LOT of time twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone to pick up and I want that time to be productive. The only thing I can think of is to knit something but I dont really want to do that.

Any suggestions of something discreete I can do/make/ learn so that I do not feel that time has gone down the drain for nothing.

Thanks.

Here’s a video interview with Tibor Shanto, with Renbor, on his Pipeline blog. He has some interesting points about doing your prospecting in a methodical and systematic way so that it actually gets done. Well worth the view.

View full post on Art Sobczak’s Telesales Blog

Since I didn’t take much interest in what he was pitching (he shoved his business card into my hand) I watched and listened as he did that with several other people he met.

Sure, we all know we should ask questions. But the effort is wasted if they’re not asked in the right way, or you don’t listen to the answers.

++++++++KEY SALES POINT+++++++
When a listener hears a question, their mind immediately is conditioned to begin searching for answers. However, when several questions are posed in rapid-fire sequence, you leave the person confused as to which one they should answer first. And, some questions are not answered at all if you don’t give them an opportunity.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

For example, read this scenario without stopping to think about each question, as if you were the person hearing the questions:

Caller: "And what do you feel your company needs most regarding boosting morale and enthusiasm? Do you think it would be compensation related… or maybe training? And how does that affect performance in all of the departments?"

Did you feel like a spinning top, rotating around trying to focus on the questions coming from all directions? Same thing happens with prospect and customers.

EFFECTIVE QUESTIONING GUIDELINES
1. Ask one question at a time. If it’s not important enough to stand on its own, don’t ask it.

2. After you ask it, shut up. If they don’t answer immediately, resist the urge to answer it for them or follow up with another one. They’re likely thinking about what they’re going to say.

3. After they apparently have finished, remain quiet for 1-2 more seconds. You might get additional information, and ensures you don’t interrupt.

4. Follow-up their answer with a related question. Don’t ping-pong around from subject to subject. For example, if they answered with, "I believe the main problem we have right now is a lack of motivation," a logical next query would be, "Oh, what are some specific situations where you’ve seen a lack of motivation?"

5. Be confident in your questioning. One reason people ask multiple questions is that they aren’t comfortable asking questions. The only way you’re going to truly help someone is by finding out about them. You’re not intruding. You’re assisting.

Fielding multiple questions is confusing for the listener, and counter-productive for you. Ask one at a time, and listen!

Art

Want to Learn "The 12 Best Questions to Ask Prospects and Customers"?

Click Here for Details

View full post on Art Sobczak’s Telesales Blog

I went back and read some of that material and will share it with you again now. If you are going to be in the office during these days, don’t mope around thinking it’s a bad time to sell-it’s a great time.

Check out these posts, make those calls, and send me your success stories.

http://www.telesalesblog.com/2008/12/22/now-is-the-best-time-to-sell.html

http://www.telesalesblog.com/2008/12/22/slow-holiday-season-sales-success-stories.html

View full post on Art Sobczak’s Telesales Blog

View full post on Ann Barr» Ann Barr : Teaching You How To Outsell Your Competition : Sales Coach

First, I decided to ask my good friend of 14 [...]

View full post on Ann Barr» Ann Barr : Teaching You How To Outsell Your Competition : Sales Coach

Tip #1 Have your day planned out before you start.

As simple as this sounds, this is by far the biggest key. If you start your day without a plan, you are guaranteed to have an inefficient day. Don’t wait until the morning of to make your “To Do” list. Make it the day before, and when you get to the office or start your day, you will have already mapped out in your mind how you will go about accomplishing your list. Not doing so opens you up to all of the distractions the day can offer. Knowing exactly what you have planned to do for the day allows you to stay focused on the project at hand, and once you accomplish your individual task, you can then move on to the next one and power through an amazing list of productive activities. At the end of the day, you like all goal setters and schedule planners will be shocked at how much more you can get accomplished by planning your day in advance. Likewise, all time management gurus suggest that you plan your week before you start it, plan your month before you start it, and play your year before you start it. Without goals and plans, you are like a rudderless ship that will be unable to maintain its course over any definite period of time once distractions come your way. However, if you have long range goals and all of your activities point toward accomplishing them, you will shocked at how quickly you reach your goals. Start you day, week, month and year with a plan, and watch your productivity skyrocket.

Tip #2 Know your weaknesses, and find ways to limit their impact.

Are you the type that just HAS to respond to emails the moment they come in even if it takes you away from the project you are working on? Do you HAVE to take every call, even if it is interrupting your proposal time, cold calling time, or presentation time? Are you an IM fiend? Are you a cell phone junky? Does your desk need to be in perfect order before you feel you can start you day? Are you entirely too conversational and need to limit the length of your appointment times or “lunch dates”? Do you do too much random surfing on the net when you should be working? Day after day, professional salespeople let minor things get in the way of major objectives. The first step to solving this problem is to identify your weaknesses, and then find ways to limit their impact.

For example, if your email is a distraction, close the program while you work through your “must finish” projects. If you need to finish proposals or have some dedicated cold calling time, perhaps you need to turn off your cell phone, email, and IM for a couple of hours. Contrary to popular belief, the world will continue to operate even if you are not “ever-present” at a moment’s notice. Your emails will still be waiting for you, and so will your messages.

How can you possibly concentrate with the focus you need to accomplish your major sales objectives with constant interruptions? You CAN control the amount of interruptions you receive in many cases, but it takes discipline and will power to keep your weaknesses from running your schedule. Not taking control of interruptions in your daily schedule will cause your day to be chopped up with insignificant “emergencies” that can be dealt with at pre-determined periods. Identify your weaknesses, and make plans ahead of time to limit their effect on your day.

Tip #3 You set your schedule, not your clients.

On a daily basis there are typically a few major activities that must be performed in order to achieve success in sales. They may include a few of the following and more:

• Prospecting

• Appointment

• Call backs

• Proposal Generation

• Follow-up to orders

How will you fit all of these in during your limited work hours, and in which amounts? If you do not know when you want or need to perform these activities, you leave your schedule open to the whims of each and every potential prospect you deal with. Top salespeople dictate their schedule. Not their clients. What does this mean exactly?

It is a huge temptation for salespeople to jump at the first opportunity to meet with a client no matter the time or place in the pursuit of the almighty “quota”. But does this make any sense at all? Over time you will have executives ask you to come in at 7 AM or 7 PM, so we come in early or leave late all in the name of duty and service. Do these opportunities work out? Are they worth your time, or are they more likely to be a greater interruption to the bigger goals you have in mind?

When you dictate your schedule, you will find your productivity will increase immensely. Try adding the following changes to your scheduling.

• Write pre-determined appointment times on your calendar, and fill them. Keep your clients on or around those appointment times so that you can set aside the time you need for other activities. Depending on your area and industry, you may want to schedule appointments for 10:00 AM, 11:30 AM, 1:00 PM, and 2:30 PM. The times do not matter as much as the reasons for setting predetermined time frames. Do you live in a metro area? Does traffic get horrific at certain times early and late in the day? Is sitting in traffic a valuable use of your time? Probably not. Set your appointment times at intervals you can run consistently and still be able to maintain a reasonable schedule. Doing so will allow you to “lock out” other time frames for your additional essential activities such as prospecting, returning calls, returning emails, etc…

• Block out prospecting times, and do not let them be interrupted. Perhaps the biggest challenge for professional salespeople is successfully blocking out dedicated prospecting time. We can get so caught up in taking care of “processes” that we can be distracted from our major function. That is selling! Who cares if your email is in perfect order and your desk is spotless if you haven’t sold anything? Exactly. Once you have blocked out appointment times, you should be able to plan specifically when you will be doing your prospecting. Block those times out, and do not schedule anything else. Turn off the cell phone, turn off IM, send calls to voice mail, and do whatever it takes to get your dedicated time to prospect. Your quantity and quality prospecting time that you set aside may very well dictate your success. By setting aside the time it deserves, you can insure your future success.

• Set aside time for communications. This may include all of the types aforementioned and more. Even though it is difficult for us to believe, it is acceptable to return emails, calls, IM’s, etc by the end of the day. We may live in a microwave society that expects instant reaction to requests, but we also live in a society that appreciates dedicated attention to details and problems when they are dealt with. By setting aside dedicated time to communicate, you can be completely focused on your client’s needs without the feelings of guilt that can be associated with being unable to concentrate of the important things of the hour. The best times for communications are the first thing in the morning, lunch hours, and at the end of the day. By dedicating time specifically to this activity, you will not be as tempted to let it interrupt your valuable appointment and prospecting times.

Implementing these three basic time management strategies of planning your days before they start, knowing your weaknesses and limiting their impact, and dictating your own schedule can potentially free up hours of your day, increase your dedicated selling time, as well as make your schedule more predictable and productive. The great world of selling is full of daily and hourly distractions, and it is up to the professional salesperson to limit their effect upon peak performance.

Steve Norris is a Texas based telecommunications professional that provides Business Telephone Systems and telecom services from over 80 carriers nationwide. He specializes in hardware solution for multi-location business with advanced infrastructure needs. Over 90% of his clients are able to implement a new Dallas Business Phone Systems without increasing their budget with TeleTAP.

So you want to be a successful seller with your own eBay business, do you? Here’s a simple, ten-step path to eBay enlightenment.

Step 1: Identify your market. Take a while to sit and watch for what sells and what doesn’t out of the items you’re interested in. Any market research data you can collect will be very useful to you later on. You’ll probably see the ’sweet spots’ quite quickly – those one or two items that always seem to sell for a good price.

Step 2: Watch the competition. Before you invest any money, see what the other sellers in your category are up to, and what their strategies are. Pay special attention to any flaws their auctions might have, because this is where you can move in and beat them at their own game.

Step 3: Find a product: Get hold of a supplier for whatever it is you want to sell, and see what the best rates you can get are – don’t be afraid to ring round quite a few to get the best deal. If the eBay prices you’ve seen are higher than the supplier’s, then you’re set.

Step 4: Start small: Don’t throw thousands at your idea straight away – get started slowly, see what works and what doesn’t, and learn as you go. Remember that it’s very cheap to try out even the craziest ideas on eBay, and who knows, they might just work!

Step 5: Test and repeat. Keep trying different strategies until you find something that works, and then don’t be ashamed to keep doing it, again and again. The chances are that you’ve just found a good niche.

Step 6: Work out a business plan: A business plan doesn’t need to be anything formal, just a few pages that outline the market opportunity you’ve spotted, your strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the plan and a brief budget. This is more for you than it is for anyone else.

Step 7: Invest and expand: This is the time to throw money at the problem. Buy inventory, and start spending more time on your business. Set a goal number of sales each week, increasing it each time.

Step 8: Make it official: Once you’ve made a few thousand dollars worth of sales, you should really register yourself as a business. Don’t worry, it’s not expensive or hard to do – a lawyer is the best person to help you through the process.

Step 9: Automate: You’ll probably find that you’re writing the same things again and again in emails or item descriptions. This is the time to give up on the manual method and turn to automated software that can create listings for you, and respond to completed auctions and payments with whatever message you provide.

Step 10: Never give up: Even when it looks like it’s all going wrong, don’t stop trying until you succeed. If you keep working at it then you’ll almost always find that you make a real breakthrough just when things are starting to look desperate.

One thing that has helped me build a rating of over 100 in a few months is selling information products on CD over and over. You can learn how to do this, as well as what it take to make a full time living at http://americanrublesdollarstore.com in the Money Making section with the Everything Ebook A Seller’s Guide

Article by Peter Ruble of American Rubles, Inc.

Increasing your leisure time using telesales and telemarketing is possible where the product is such that it does not need handling on a day to day basis. The only business I can think of is when you have set up an MLM network.

It may be that you have outsourced your Telesales and Telemarketing group, which takes care of the cold calling, responding to customers, adding new customers, and also, importantly, having a number of people to go around and clear a sale or deliver the product. In such a scenario, this increase in your leisure time by using telesales and telemarketing is possible.

What is also possible is that your business is getting exposed to other people, who may then turn out to be your own competitors at a later date. And they would have a head start because you give them the money to learn your business, and not the other way around. This is re-emphasized, and therefore the last sentence is worth a look again.

And the visibility of their own persons adds to their image, and you are nothing but a faceless mask. That is why even in large corporations, and from the author’s personal experience, it has been found that while yes you can delegate a number of tasks to other in your own office, or as stated earlier, outsourced, ultimately you are responsible for your business.

Certainly, your customers will understand the need for your leisure time, but till what point that would be possible is a moot point. Beyond a particular level, when you become unavailable to the customers, you stand a risk of losing them to rival competition or their perceptions of you, and therefore of your company.

In a competitive environment in which the world is placed today, where the internet is playing a much bigger role than anticipated even by the so called out of box thinkers, leisure time has decreased, for the owner of a business. If you are not available, and customers who dealt with you in the beginning directly, would feel that you have grown so big, that you don’t care anymore, and therefore, to that extent personal level contact is lost. It must be remembered while asking this kind of question of Using Telesales and telemarketing, that despite assertions to the contrary, personal contact is something everyone values.

Telesales and telemarketing taking the place of a real voice is a clear example; Take for instance your own use of trying to contact somebody in a bank to get some real answers. But with a telesales or telemarketing system in place, you reach a disembodied voice, which gives you a menu and options, and by the time you get to put a question to a real human voice, you have lost quite a bit of money, and even worse, your temper.

So while yes, telesales and telemarketing can help increase your leisure time, it must be done in a manner where the person who calls, and you are out on leisure time, you should be notified on your return that there was a call for you personally. That has to be factored into your consumer database. Never forget the basic fact, that despite the reach of the internet, people still go shopping to the stores and crowd them in the evening, even if they could have ordered it from a fancy catalogue, on line, real time, 3D viewing of the product. The commitment of the entrepreneur to his business is much higher than that of the staff, except a few exceptions, and handing it over to an outsource, is paying for a competitor to begin using your resources, the most valuable of which is the customer data base.

Smith & W-Smith help businesses with search engine optimisation, website design, small business sales and amrketing strategy and development. They also work withBeserved Virtual Offices, a supplier of Telesales, telemarketing and Telephone Answering Services in developing and online strategy.

university.
I had a whole lot of enthusiasm and not much else. He had the experience, though maybe not the best coaching skills.
I laugh now about how bad I was. I can honestly say planning was one of the best and most productive skills I ever learnt.
Time management and organization are like evergreen trees- they never lose their importance and are frequently discussed topics in managing a sales team.
With the economy the way it is it is so easy to panic and run around,trying to do every thing. Where as, if you take time to sit down and really think about what you want to achieve, your focus and results can’t help but happen.
Everyone tends to understand that the key ingredient to living a life that is less stressful, moreenjoyable and one that allows you to find the time to fit everything into a jam-packed schedule is proper planning and prioritizing of your time.
What most people don’t seem to know is how to make that happen!
How can you prioritize your work and tasks so that you have enough time for it all, and still keep your sanity?
Get a Calendar/Planner/Diary
Regardless of what you call it, you need to have some sort of calendar that you use to plan out your time.
Preferably one that you can carry around with you, and physically write in- but some people might find the digital versions to be just as effective.
The trend is for everything electronic. It doesn’t really matter as long as it happens. You might be surprised to know that I have actually gone back to a page a day large diary.
Its great to be able to write things down quickly. The bonus is psychologically I feel great to when I see how much I have got through.
The night before each day, take 15 minutes to plan the following day.
Using To-Do Lists Effectively.
Making a list of 50 things that need to be done is not the best use of your time; nor will it actually help you manage your time better.
I follow a great tip that you will find in a number of books. Look at your major goals that you want to achieve say over the next 90 days.
Focus on your top five.
You could make these business or a mix of business and personal. Then committ to do something each day with each one. It could be minor.
Let me give you an example. Say you decide that you want to have a team vision by the end of the 90 days.
So your week might look like this:
Day 1: Decide and brain storm all the positive things about having a vision.Set your outcome.
Day 2: Research in full the company vision and how that could translate to your team.
Day 3: Email your boss to let them know what you are

doing.
Day 4: Plan out an email to the team
Day 5: Email the team to test the water
Each of these things won’t take long. Do these for each of your goals and you will be astounded how quick things happen.
A great top tip is when creating your list of things to do. Be realistic on how longs thing take. I have a theory that at birth all sales managers have a chip that is planted.
This makes us think we are superhuman. Fast does not always mean best.
Prioritise Tasks
Most Sales Managers are overwhelmed with a large number of activities that need to be done on a regular basis.
The best way to effectively plan your time and keep things under control is to prioritise the tasks according to their level of importance.
When working through the creation of your to-do list; you would want to schedule your urgent, or most important tasks for earlier in the day, to make sure they get completed.
As the day goes on, unexpected interuptions may cause some of your tasks to go undone; so it’s always a good idea to do the most pressing activities before doing those that are not quite as important.
It also has a psychological effect.It gives an energy boost.

To be technical its actually an energy release.

Think of how you feel when you have gone through your expenses finally and they are emailed or posted to the boss. Feels great don’t you think?
Delegate, Do, or Schedule
You’ve no doubt heard the saying:

Don’t put off til tomorrow what can be done today.
While this is true for avoiding procrastination, there is nothing wrong with scheduling less-urgent tasks for a later day or time- as long as you are actually scheduling them to be done and not just avoiding them!
When things come up during the day that you can do in under two minutes, just do them right away.
This could be answering an email, filing information, or putting a client’s folder in the file cabinet(versus setting it on the desk to do later!)
If there are tasks that you are faced with completing that someone else on your team could do just as well- quickly delegate those items to the proper people with a scheduled deadline for completion.
This only works effectively if you don’t have to spend as much time explaining the project as you would just completing it yourself, so make sure the activity is really something that can be delegated before passing it off.
The keys to successful delegation are that the person is capable of completing the work; they know when it’s due and will keep to that deadline; and it is a task that delegation results in giving you time to work on a more urgent matter.

Denise Oyston is a performance consultant, trainer and winner of two national sales manager awards.

She now specialises in developing new sales managers. To access her free e course on how to overcome the 7 mistakes all new managers make go to http://www.NewManagerSecrets.com