Managing the "in-between" time

I am stuck in traffic in Atlanta. Again.

Up ahead, I can see that the traffic light is green. A cursory count of the number of cars in front of me puts the number at about twenty-five. I sigh because I know that I'm not getting through the intersection for another cycle of the light.

But, wait! Twenty-five cars is less than 500 feet of distance between me and the light. Even at only 10 mph, I can travel 500 feet in thirty-five seconds. The light is timed for one minute of green. Why can't I make the light?

The answer is simple and frustrating. If everyone were paying attention to the light and started to move forward as soon as the light turned green, all of us would be going at least 10 mph within a couple of seconds. Not only would the 25th car in line make it through the intersection, the 35th car in line would make it, too. Life would be good and Atlanta would be a fine place to drive. But, the 25th car doesn't make it through the light and life is not good on the streets of Atlanta.

The reason why the 25th car doesn' t make it through the light is that not everyone starts to go at the same time. The car in the front of the line goes and then the next car goes. But, in between the time the first and second cars start, there is a lag. The "in-between" time. The time the second driver waits to make sure the first driver has seen the light turn green and is going. The in-between time is repeated for each car until the 25th car in line is waiting thirty to forty seconds before moving at all! The light is green. You can see it. But, you aren't moving because the guy in front of you isn't moving. The in-between time has made it impossible for you to achieve your goal of making it through the intersection in one cycle of the light.

In order to achieve one's goals in sales, one must sell more stuff to existing customers or find more customers. Busy sales people often find this difficult because there is only so much time in the day. We often hear that the most successful sales people are working deep into the night and on weekends in order to achieve their income goals. If this isn't practical or desireable, let me suggest that you start doing a better job of reducing your own "in-between" time.

Here are some tips for outside sales people:

1) Geographically cluster your sales calls. If you drive around a metro area like Atlanta to make your calls, there is no sense in making one call in the north and then another one in the south and a third one in the east. Cluster your calls so that you are making as many calls in one geography as possible before moving on to the next.
2) Be prepared to do business wherever you are. Sometimes traffic considerations cause us to schedule calls three hours apart when we know the call only takes an hour and the drive time to the next is only thirty minutes. We do it because of the uncertainty of both those estimates and the need to be on time to the next call. Perfectly understandable. What is not acceptable, though, is to sit in your car reading a newspaper as you wait for the appointment time to roll around. Carry a list of folks that you need to call with you. Always have your laptop with you. Be prepared to work during any in-between time that you have inadvertently created.
3) Develop very good relationships with the administrative and other support personnel back at the office. When circumstances conspire to keep you out of the office, you may need something from your desk or files. You can get work done through other people but only if you made them a part of your team.

Here are a couple of tips for inside sales people:

1) Leave the administrative work for the hours when you can not reach customers. If you are calling customers and being productive and everything is going along smoothly, you need to keep making calls. The last thing you'll want to do is to stop talking to customers in order to put together some presentation materials that need to be mailed to a prospect. Some sales people like to do everything that needs to be done for a particular prospect before moving on to the next, but this creates in-between time.
2) Schedule breaks for yourself. Working the phones or the internet or the e-mail can be tedious. If you schedule five minutes per hour to stretch your legs or to get a drink or to chat with your neighbor, you'll be more productive during the next 55 minutes. When inside sales people try to plow through two or three hours of super productive work, they invariably end up creating more in-between time when they become mentally and emotionally drained.
3) Maintain an accurate pipeline. Nothing reduces in-between time like knowing which are the most important prospects to call first.