Can you really manage time? I frequently get the question, “Do you guys do training on time management?” It’s always a struggle for me to answer. There’s the little kid inside of me that wants to say, “You can’t manage time!”
Of course, that wouldn’t make for a very good conversation.
But really, you can’t manage time! Time will come and go. We all have the same amount of it. It’s not something you can save up. It flows at the same rate for everyone, regardless of what you do.
Then what’s all this time management talk about?
Really, there are only three things we can control or manage. Behavior, attitude, and technique. That’s it!
What happens is you get sidetracked by tons of other stuff. You don’t focus on what you can control, and focus instead on things you can’t control.
Sometimes your behavioral wiring gets in the way. Maybe you’re the type of person who wants to please everyone. Maybe you’re more the type that could care less. There’s good and bad to both sides of that, of course. But regardless, it can get in our way.
If you embrace the mindset that you can really only control those three things, it gives the concept of time management a very different connotation.
In Sandler, we have a lot of techniques and resources that can help be more effective and efficient with time.
- Setting up front contracts (or agreements) before meetings
- Finding out a customer’s preferred method of communication
- Qualifying by disqualifying
- Giving people permission to tell you no
- Understanding that a salesperson should not be someone else’s doormat
Naturally, that’s just a sampling of techniques. But at the end of the day, none of those are really about time management. They’re about managing yourself. Specifically, managing your own behavior, attitude and technique. And those are really the only three things you can manage.
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