5 Ideas On How To Plan The Perfect Sales Week

“An hour of planning can save you ten hours of doing” – Dale Carnegie

How often do you let your work week just kinda happen to you?

I call these “default” weeks. Where you just go into autopilot and cruise through the days.

Nothing terrible happens when you do this. But nothing stellar happens either!

But great salespeople don’t allow this. They’re control freaks about what happens in their week!

How often do you approach your work week without a solid success plan? How often do you let the work week just kind of happen?

Here’s my concern. It’s what I like to call the default week. The default week is what happens without a plan. You default to the tyranny of the urgent.

In default week mode, other people make your plans for you and you just respond to crises and problems.

You might be busy, but don’t mistake busy-ness with effectiveness.

So, how does a top performer plan?

Top performing sales professionals absolutely hate it when they’re out of control.

And when you fail to plan out your week, that’s where you end up – out of control.

Now look, to clear up any misconceptions that you might have right now, I’m not talking about planning out every second of every day.

As a sales professional, that would be impossible.

There’s just too much that happens spontaneously that would prevent an overly rigid schedule.

But there are a few things that you can do in your weekly planning session that could ensure that you’re doing the things that really matter.

To ensure that you’re not living in default week mode.

And it starts by asking a very important question.

What matters most?

When you haven’t defined what matters most, small things seem like big things, but don’t confuse the urgent with the important.

One more time. Don’t confuse the urgent with the important.

The urgent screams. The important whispers.

Here are five ideas on how to plan out your perfect sales week:

1. Commit to a weekly planning session. All it takes is just 15 minutes. Schedule a 15-minute planning session as the last thing you do before your weekend.
2. Start with a victory lap. When you’re getting into your planning session, start by celebrating what went right. Otherwise you just get bogged down with everything you have to do moving forward. Take a moment to relax, chill out, celebrate.
3. Schedule your what matters most first. Before you do anything else, figure out how you could accomplish those things that will matter most in the first three days of the workweek.
4. Schedule in growth time. Find a specific block of time that is dedicated to reading, to an online course, to a deep dive study of your craft. To practicing. This doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intentionality.
5. Review the plan every day. It will take you 30 seconds per day, max, to review the plan. But that half minute will keep you focused.

Remember, top performers are control freaks. And the most important thing to control is your own time and energy. It only takes 15 minutes a week.

And until next time, learn more to earn more.