A facts is a fact—we can’t stop, nor create, more time. An effective manager is aware that time is a finite, non-renewable resource which must be carefully managed.
A panicky manager will try and squeeze time in his grasp to keep it from slipping away. The symptoms are familiar to us all: days jammed with schedules, meetings with rigid agendas, and jealously guarded access to unscheduled time. The panicked manager’s constant anxiety is how to do too much work in not enough time.
This manager doesn’t understand that you can’t conquer time, and productivity can’t be squeezed into time frames.
The Sandler manager sees time as a frame in which to accomplish activity. There is always too much to be done. But the secret is that there are two—and only two—ways of framing time: the short-term time frame, and the long-term time frame.
Short-term time, on the whole, will always be felt more urgently. Long-term time will always be more important. Some things need to be done yesterday, while many important things require the unfolding of processes which take time. You simply cannot rush a gourmet meal or a quality project.
Depending on the exact nature of your sales cycle, and your ordering and shipment times, short-term and long-term will have different meanings. Decide for yourself what your windows are for each. Is your short-term from now until tomorrow, or until two weeks from now? What are your long-term time frames? We all are directed by quarterly and annual goals. Does your planning extend beyond that time? Do you work from time to time on your five-year plan?
This is basically how you frame your time for work—doing the tasks which lead you toward achieving. Over both the short- and long-term there are major and minor tasks and activities you must perform. Whether they are major or minor is closely related to the nature of the goals they are directed toward attaining. Reading routine mail is of minor importance. Gathering information to complete a bidding process is of major importance.
One way to simplify organizing and prioritizing your tasks and activities is to reduce "work clutter." There are many activities that clutter our days, robbing us of time. Some are interruptions from outside—phone calls, drop-in visitors, and pop-up crises. You probably have a few personal time wasters—not saying no, refusing to delegate, or having a messy work area. And then there are some time wasters that are just part of the job, such as reading work related material, business travel and meetings.
In addition to the relative importance of the tasks you are performing, you must consider the relative urgency of the task. Some tasks are very urgent, and others can be deferred. There can be urgent tasks related to long-term efforts, like arranging a planning meeting, and there can be deferrable, short-term tasks, like responding to routine phone calls.
In general, there are no hard and fast, right or wrong answers here. What is important is the thinking going on that invites you, as a manager, to frame your activities over time.
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Excerpted from Sandler’s Strategic Sales Management training program, ©1998 Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
