How to Be Faster on Your Laptop

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Are you serious about freeing up time for more real selling? This post is for you.

I’m amazed at the number of salespeople who don’t realize how much faster they could get things done on their laptops.

Oh, they get frustrated, alright. Or they joke about how slow they are. But they never do anything about it. They let tasks become projects and minutes become hours as they click or mouse around, ever ignorant of the variety of faster ways to get things done.

Don’t let this be you. Here are a few quick-hitting tips for getting things done faster on your laptop. You’ll find more tips in related future posts.

Become familiar with the standard Microsoft shortcuts. Don’t move your mouse to File, then select “New” to start a new document when you’re in Microsoft Word or Excel, or any other application. Hold down the Ctrl button while typing “N” (written shorthand for this is Ctrl-N).

Start using the Ctrl button. Don’t click on the front of a word and drag the cursor to the end then go to Edit on the main menu to select “Copy”. Double-click the word and hold the “Ctrl” while typing “C” (Ctrl-C). Then, put the cursor wherever you want to paste that info and Ctrl-V it. Need to select an entire paragraph? Triple-click it. There are a ton of shortcuts like these. Visit this page to see many of them: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449.

How about the Alt button, too. Let’s say you need to move back and forth between two applications? Quit using your mouse when your hands are already on the keys! Hold the “Alt” button then hit the “Tab” button to toggle between the application you’re on and the one you want to switch to.

Keep your folders simple. No folders within folders within folders. You’ll find files much faster if you keep it simple. Two folders may be all you need: Active (files you use a lot) and Archive (files you may not need soon, but could someday in the future). Forward all other emails to your personal Gmail account, with its nearly endless storage.Use a standard naming routine with your files. “Rough Draft Franklin Machinery Presentation” should simply be “Presentation — Franklin Machinery A”, so it’s alphabetized with all of your other presentations. The next draft, if it needs to be a new file, could then be named “Presentation — Franklin Machinery B”.

Learn how to customize your menus. This is a post on its own. But let me just say, that after you do this one-time task in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, or many other applications, one simple click can easily replace two or more clicks for closing files, changing font sizes, making fonts all UPPERCASE or lowercase, changing line spacing, and far more (Hey, it’s the little things). Hint: Go to Tools on the main menu, then select Customize. You can drag and drop items to add or delete buttons from the top menu bar.

These little things can become moneymakers for you as you spend less time staring at a screen, and more time face-to-face with customers and prospects. In Part 2, we’ll cover some fun and fast ways to go from typing something simple like “tfye” to seeing “Thanks for your email. Here’s the information you requested. Let me know if you’re free to go over this tomorrow morning. Best regards, Fred” on your screen. Stay tuned.