Inside Sales by Design

sales tools

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Focus your time: Become the Mistress/Master of your Calendar

In this short clip, we talk about time. There is a massive body of work out in the world talking about time, time management, maximizing your time, getting the most out of your time, etc….you name it, there’s an article, book, expert, example. Here’s the reality, we all get 168 hours a week and time is the most important resource we have; once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Perhaps approach how you spend your time by using the Pauli exclusion principle that says no two things can occupy the same space.*  Folks, if you have an hour, you only have an hour. That’s a total of 60 minutes and we can only use them once.

So what does all of that mean? That means we employ massive, epic, and egregious prioritization and compartmentalization of our time, tasks, talents, and treasures to become the Mistress and Master of our Calendar. Here are some tips you can use:

  1. Brendon Burchard’s 1 Page Productivity Planner
  2. The Power of the Three-Item-To-Do-List
  3. Search the power of to do lists and you’ll get about 587 million returns.

Action tip for the day: employ a to-do list, make it manageable, keep your eye on your strategic goals, while executing tactically daily

*I am not, nor will pretend to be a physicist. I am, however, citing the Pauli exclusion principle in its most simple form. 

Dionne is a 20 year sales veteran having built and scaled Inside Sales team from the ground up. She started her own firm, Inside Sales by Design, to work with companies wanting to build their Inside Sales Teams right the first time and transform their current Inside Sales Team into something greater. Dionne believes in and uses common sense, practical approaches to inspire leaders and teams to greatness.

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Who’s at Your Table?


Do you know who is at your table? As we’ve said, Leadership isn’t about us or even about titles. Leadership is about getting stuff done and getting it done well.

If you’re given a new project and/or assignment today, who would you go to? Probably the person who comes to your mind first as someone who is capable of helping, leading, guiding, etc.

Here’s why this matters: As leaders, we’re responsible for knowing who’s at our table and harnessing resources the right way to get the job done.

Action Tips of the Day:

  1. What’s your sign? – How would you describe your communication sign? Would others agree? Get to know yourself.
  2. What’s their sign? – Get to know the communication style of those on your team, your peers, your co-workers; you get the idea.

Resources:

  1. MRG Research – this was mentioned in the video, very powerful information
  2. Five Voices – very impactful book that allows us to communicate effectively

 

Dionne is a 20 year sales veteran having built and scaled Inside Sales team from the ground up. She started her own firm, Inside Sales by Design, to work with companies wanting to build their Inside Sales Teams right the first time and transform their current Inside Sales Team into something greater. Dionne and her team believe in and uses common sense, practical approaches to inspire leaders and teams to greatness.

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Get Stuff Done

If you live by the words “this is how we’ve always done it” and really, really like a well defined rut, this is probably not what you’re looking for. If however, you are interested in making changes within yourself and your team, you’ve come to the right place.

If you’re someone who likes to get up and get stuff done, then you’re in the right place. If dangling items on your to-do list make you nauseous and procrastination make you cranky, you’re in good company.

As a leader, we are on the hook for numbers, relationships, process, initial onboarding, ongoing training, the list goes on and on. Can I get an Amen? Sometimes, tackling these big initiatives is so overwhelming, we don’t know where to start.

And even worse, we do nothing.

Well, let’s talk about eating the elephant one bit at a time, just like in the video. At the AA-ISP Leadership Summit in 2017, I was fortunate enough to lead a pre-event workshop titled Transforming your Inside Sales Team. During this workshop, we walked through an Inside Sales Infrastructure scorecard and everybody rated themselves.

The purpose of this exercise was (and is) to stop, think, and do.

The leaders in this workshop scored themselves and then rated what particular area of focus would give their team the most lift. Based upon those scores, they were then able to plot actions on an annual calendar for tackling.

Again, keeping in mind that things happen – both good and bad – and we should allow enough time so we’re not short-circuiting our efforts before they begin.

ISbD Annual Plan
ISbD Annual Plan to get stuff done

 

Resources for you:

  1. AA-ISP
  2. Transforming your Inside Sales Team worksheets (this is where you’ll find the scorecard)

Action tip of the day: (1) complete your scorecard, (2) figure out which area of your Inside Sales Infrastructure you could improve that would matter most to your team and deliver the biggest impact, (3) determine next steps and right them down, and (4) compartmentalize what you need, next best steps, and execute!

 

 

 

Dionne is a 20 year sales veteran having built and scaled Inside Sales team from the ground up. She started her own firm, Inside Sales by Design, to work with companies wanting to build their Inside Sales Teams right the first time and transform their current Inside Sales Team into something greater. Dionne believes in and uses common sense, practical approaches to inspire leaders and teams to greatness.

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What makes you go faster?

I get asked fairly frequently about tools for Inside Sales teams. Here are my typical questions in response:

  1. What are you looking to accomplish?
  2. What does your current process look like? (The one you’re trying to automate.)
  3. Have y’all used tools in the past?
  4. What’s prompting the search now? (This will help in prioritization.)

Unfortunately, I get a lot of vague answers and even worse, the dreaded “we don’t really have a defined sales process right now.”

Yikes. We’ve all been there and as a practitioner, I was in the same boat. Do more with less was the message from executives, so off we go tool shopping. Only to come up against those questions time and again.

So now I ask those questions and share with individuals, if your process isn’t in place, you’re not really automating anything. 0+0 = 0.

If we stick with the theme from our picture – ban low performance (or non-existent processes, not high performance tools (designed to enhance and accelerate your process).

Before going tool shopping, start with the four questions above and come up with some specific answers. Those answers are the key to successful tool shopping, choosing the right tool, and making the experience overall successful and giving you everything you’re hoping for in a tool.

Here’s what to do next: 

  1. Leverage the Tool section from the PM Inside Sales course to define and hone your process so you’re not buying shelf ware.
  2. Visit the AA-ISP website and review the Resource Section.

P.S. This is the same approach for both tech, non-tech, SaaS, etc. The overarching theme is to have a plan to execute against in order to achieve the goal brought on by a great idea.

Dionne is an 18 year sales veteran having built and scaled Inside Sales team from the ground up. She recently started her own firm, Inside Sales by Design, to work with mid-size companies to share the ultimate best practices of high performing Inside Sales teams. To that end, she recently co-created PM Inside Sales, an online course teaching the fundamentals that have made her teams so successful.