Spending too much time spinning your wheels?
You know what I mean. Putting out fires. Attending to low-priority tasks. Managing inefficient sales people and processes that don’t yield the results you need.
It’s frustrating, right? How does it happen?
- Lack of reflection. You get so caught up in the frantic pace of your work day, you have little time to prioritize and focus on high-payoff activities (HPAs) that drive your staffing firm’s revenue and continued success.
- Habits. Over time, you’ve formed established, familiar patterns of work behavior. It’s tough to change habits. “Comfortable” activities aren’t necessarily the highest and best use of your time and energy.
- Urgent issues. It’s natural to respond immediately to the never-ending stream of problems that your sales team presents to you each day. Every time you say “yes” to an urgent issue, you may be saying “no” to a more critical sales activity.
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It’s time to work smarter, not harder.
Without a clear understanding of your HPAs and a sound plan for executing them,bad habits and pressing issues can quickly derail your efforts. Use these tips to work smarter – and achieve more:
Know your HPAs. Remember your role! What are the top five or six activities that will ensure long-term, profitable growth for your staffing or recruiting firm? Go back to the drawing board and determine the most productive, intelligent use of your working hours. Depending on your role, your HPAs may include:
- Long-term, strategic planning.
- Translating your staffing firm’s overall sales strategy into clearly defined departmental goals.
- Developing and nurturing strategic business relationships within key accounts and prospect organizations.
- Helping sales professionals determine their HPAs – and delivering the support, resources and systems they need to achieve them. Make sure your team’s HPAs align with your own, supporting both departmental and organizational goals.
- Training, coaching and mentoring your sales team.
- Helping your teamto continually fill the top of the sales funnel and proactively manage your pipeline.
- Increasing conversions.
- Generating more high profit, repeat business.
- Developing ways to move up the value chain by offering higher value (and higher profit) solutions.
- Leveraging technology to identify high-potential accounts, increase sales process efficiency, and strengthen business relationships.
- Engaging in activities to recruit, retain, reward and develop high performers.
- Promoting healthy “churn” to continually improve the quality of your sales team.
Make HPAs SMART. Once you determine your HPAs, link them to specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals. By their very nature, SMART goals create accountability for your HPAs, increasing the likelihood they will be achieved.
Plan your time. Without a clear plan of attack for each week, you may spend it fighting fires and engaging in comfortable (but low payoff) activities. So make sure you plan to devote at least 50% of each dayto critical HPAs:
- Start by blocking off time for your top priorities. Group similar HPAs together throughout your day, to increase your efficiency for each block of time.
- Plan your highest priority and/or least favorite (but important) activities first. Setting aside time for the tough things you absolutely need to do creates a “no excuses” operating environment.
- Stay strong. Urgent issues and old habitsmay derail you from focusing on HPAs. Don’t fall into this trap! Plan time in your schedule for emergencies and “B and C” tasks that are an unavoidable part of doing business, but don’t let them consume your day.
Become an efficiency ninja. Streamline, delegate or get rid of routines and activities that rob you of time that could be spent on HPAs:
- Determine which non-HPA activities truly require your expertise and impact your performance. Consider tasks that fall outside of those responsibilities as candidates for delegation.
- Use technology tools to plan your time, automate sales activities and increase your efficiency.
Want more time to focus on your HPAs?
PrideStaff combines the advantages of local ownership with the resources and support of a national organization. We have the tools, systems and processes in place that free you to focus on sustained, profitable growth in any economy.
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