5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Increase Your Productivity by lisafugere

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5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Increase Your Productivity
by lisafugere
Group Your Prospects into Niches

Outline the categories into which your prospects fit, and create specific emails, phone call outlines, tweets, etc. for each of them. For example, if you sell electrician supplies, try focusing on outdoor-specific electricians. This makes it a lot easier to communicate with your prospects, and a lot quicker.
Follow Up...ALWAYS
Set specific time frames in your day during which you will simply follow up on prospect meetings (be they phone calls or demos, etc.). A follow up can linger at the back of our minds all day until we put it off until tomorrow, but when you?re trying to close deals within a tight time frame, you can?t afford to put any form of communication with your prospects off even a day. Schedule an hour or two on your calendar at the end of the day, and stay late if you need to. Making 15 sales calls a day is pointless if you aren't following up on every single one, especially since you have already done the hard work.
Arrive Early and Leave Early 

Hitting the phones is tough to do between meetings, lunches, conference calls and water-cooler conversations?and phone calls aren't the only tasks scheduled in your Outlook calendar. You've also got emails to answer, orders to follow up on, and then there are all those lunches, conference calls and water-cooler conversations. Arrive to work early and get a ton of work done while it is quiet. Plan to leave early (to make up for arriving early) as well and it will help you keep a well-planned schedule. If morning?s not your thing, then show up late and stay late. The quiet hours are always the hours during which the most productive work gets done.
Turn off the Internet/Cell 
Phone
Turning off technology is incredibly difficult for salespeople, especially since you might miss an important call, or even more important?an order! But?and trust us on this?it will still be there in an hour. Turning off the internet (that's right?it can be turned off!) and your cellphone will let you concentrate and get down to business. Do this just one hour a day and you'll see a quick jump in your sales productivity and sales volumes.
Outsource Data Entry
Executives have administrative assistants for a reason?their time is too valuable to spend on outsourceable tasks. You likely can make more per hour by focusing on sales and paying someone to do administrative and data-entry tasks. This is easy to do since these days you can find virtual assistants online that will work on a freelance, per-hour basis.