5 Things You Should Stop Doing Tomorrow
Written by Jan Visser on January 30, 2008. Leave a Comment on this Post.
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An hour on completing an expense report, while you could have been following up on a proposal.
Two hours of entering data in your CRM system, during which you could have visited a client and 20 minutes of fiddling with PowerPoint, trying to get these darn bullets to look right.
15 minutes here. An hour there. It turns 8 hour workdays into 12 hour drains, it takes away from the time you can spend with your family and it doesn’t put a single dime back in your pocket.
We wrote about this topic extensively when we introduced David Seah’s approach to good activities, those who directly contribute to your sales results.
But how about those activities that aren’t necessarily good, but that are still expected to get done?
No doubt about it, some of these things do need to get done — but that doesn’t mean you have to do it! When you consider that an hour of time for a business to business sales professional is typically worth about $150, mundane busy work all of a sudden starts becoming a rather expensive hobby.
That’s when you can consider the services of a Virtual Assistant to get the job done.
“Virtual assistants” can be hired on an hourly basis or at a minimum number hours a week/month — whichever suits your need. We found official VA services at $50-$60 an hour in the United States and less if you commit to a certain number of hours or if you farm it out to India.
But if you’d like to keep things close to home and you’re a bit resourceful, it wouldn’t be that hard to find a student that would much prefer making $20 an hour out of their own home instead of a glorious $8 at Starbucks.
Here are 5 ideas for activities you could stop doing today and consider outsourcing to a virtual assistant.
- Responding to standard emails, scheduling appointments or entering data in your CRM or contact management system
- Creating (or fine-tuning) Powerpoint presentations and filing expense reports
- Following up on leads and sending out brochures, thank you notes and holiday cards
- Making travel arrangements and dinner reservations - even ordering a gift for your spouse online
- Forecasting, budgeting or update your resume
If you’re a top producer or you want to become one, you need to be working on things that make you money. Using a virtual assistant can be a way to do that.
Give it some thought and let us know in the comments. Would using a Virtual Assistant be something for you?
Great advice if you can afford it! For those of you that cannot part with the coin today, I suggest delegating these activities to the times when you cannot be calling or visiting prospects/customers. If you are looking to become a career sales professional, these tasks should be done in your early, EARLY morning, or after the calling day is done.
There are two of the five that I am cautionary about delegating if you do not have a system to stay apprised. Those are CRM management and forecasting. Removing yourself from these processes can remove you from the sales process as a whole. It is important to listen to, write down, re-type, read, and say out loud, the things your prospect/customer has told you. These different forms of communication hold with them different forms of learning. Utilizing this method, you can better come up with objectives for your next call or visit.
Delegating your forecast can also be a risk if you do not stay on top of it. These are your potential sales, thus your future, and to ahnd it off to another to manage is well, risky.
Good caution, Karl - and very valid points.
Obviously, what I didn’t mean to imply that you outsource the “qualitative” element of forecasting or updating your CRM.
It’s YOU who still needs to decide *what* needs to happen. It’s someone else who can execute on the administrative task. In other words - “put these accounts with these percentages in this spreadsheet template” or “update account X with this contact information” is something you can instruct someone else to do.
The point I tried making was that it’s the mundane labor you outsource, not the brain activity.
I have used both real assistants and virtual assistants. The real ones, if they are good, will observe, see how they can help and move in… and will obviously do more than listed to help make life easier. Virtual ones are more difficult… they have to be given specific tasks… which can often take longer to explain than time saved. The other disadvantage is that the virtual ones are not there… they can’t handle the physical paper… they can’t do the filing… or make the coffee! I worked for 3 years with a virtual and probably wont do it again because I don’t think the value was there… which may be down to the way I work, but that still means I don’t get the value for me.
I also have to agree with Karl’s point… don’t give anyone the option of delegating their sales responsibility… it is often the process of inputting that triggers thought and action… delegate it and accountability soon gets forgotten.