Page 10 - Increase Your 2020 Sales

6. Ideal Sales Week

I graduated as an Education Major from the University of Connecticut specializing in Secondary
Physical Education. In short, I was a gym teacher. I thought that gym teachers picked a sport
they wanted to teach the students, put equipment out on the gym floor, demonstrated what and
how and then stood by with a whistle. Little did I know they spent nights and weekend hours
constructing lesson plans and class schedules.

When I coached at the University of Cincinnati, we constructed plans and practice schedules
weekly. We would look at film of the upcoming opponent and based upon intel from our last
game, we would determine what we needed to most work on. We developed practices and game
plans for execution each week.

Of course, a lot can go wrong to throw off the Ideal Week practice and game plan in football and
in professional selling. Most Time Management programs fail because participants fail to be
slave to the Ideal Sales Week they planned.

Below are the keys to creating an Ideal Sales Week and making it work for you and your sales
team:

1. Identify the must do weekly activities. Remember that about 20% of your activities
generate roughly 80% of your results. Identify and pursue only the 20% must do
activities that generate results.
2. Prioritize your most impactful activities.
3. Allocate either hours or a % of your total work week to be spent on the must do
activities. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a 40-hour work week in selling.
4. Block out time on the schedule to perform your must do activities.
5. Block out time for fires, the unplanned, the important-but-not-urgent events that will
occur.
6. Stay committed to the schedule:
1. Only urgent and important events should throw you off your Ideal Week. Urgent
and important events include things like a top 10% client has a can’t-wait problem
or you have a personal, unavoidable emergency. Ignore the gnat bites- pay
attention to the alligator bites!
2. Attend the important, but not urgent, events in the time you allocate to "fires".

Here is a graphic of what an Ideal Sales Week might look like on the next page:

©ACTGLLC 2020 Page 9