Widen Your Personal Bandwidth and Sell More

It's Thursday and the week has been crazy busy dealing with a massive barrage of emails and customer issues. You glance at the time. CRAP! It's already 3:30PM! Where did the day go? When you walked into the office this morning, you intended to prospect and now, the day is functionally over and you still have eight more urgent tasks left on your to-do list. It's frustrating because there's never enough bandwidth to get everything done!

The term "bandwidth" originated in the 1930s. It began as a way to describe the speed and volume of information traveling through a communication channel during a given period of time. The term has evolved into a description of a person's capacity to handle multiple tasks during a day. By using the tricks and tools in this article, you can widen your selling bandwidth.

30 Extra Minutes

Tomorrow morning, imagine arriving at your office thirty minutes early. How would you use that time if you followed two simple rules?

1. You CANNOT look at emails! No peeking at your computer, tablet, smartphone…period!

2. The tasks you do during this time MUST be directly tied to new business development.

Arriving at the office earlier than usual is a simple and effective strategy to increase bandwidth as long as you spend the extra time on selling activities.

Change Where You Work

Some salespeople find it hard to focus on selling when they are in their office. The reasons for this are numerous. Co-workers interrupt you, your desk may be in an open area where it's noisy, or perhaps you are nervous about other people listening in as you make cold calls.

To widen your bandwidth, go someplace new and try something different. Sometimes our biggest enemy is habit! If you want to break out of old patterns, start by changing your environment. In a new place it is easier turn-off autopilot thinking and act differently. Make your calls from home, a coffee shop or even a park bench and see if the change of venue brings you different results. For different results, stop doing the same things in the same way in the same place!

Take a Break

Have you ever had a day like this? You arrive at 7:30AM. You work without a break until 11:30AM. Lunch is served from the vending machine and you enjoy your fine dining at your desk while you respond to emails. By 3:15PM, your shoulders ache from the hours hunched over the computer and the throbbing pain in your wrists makes you think carpal tunnel. You are tired. Tired of working but you can't stop because there's so much left to do. If you don't get it all done, you'll never have time to focus on selling and developing new business.

If that describes your typical day, pay attention! Research shows working non-stop makes people less productive than they would be if they took breaks. In a June 16, 2012 article in the New York Times titled, "To Stay on Schedule, Take a Break." Phyllis Korkki interviewed John P. Trougakos, an assistant management professor at the Rotman School of Management. Trougakos is an expert on work-life balance and performance management. He compares mental concentration to muscle usage. After sustained usage, concentration becomes fatigued just as muscles become fatigued. A rest period is needed for recovery and to continue to operate productively.

The next time you find yourself drifting mentally, falling into daydreams, or it's difficult to make decisions, stop! Get up. Stretch while breathing deeply. Take a brisk walk to clear your head. Talk with a co-worker. Step outside and take in a glimpse and breath of the real world.

For ten minutes, do something different and enjoyable to clear your head and reenergize your mental batteries. Return to your tasks refreshed and ready to work hard.

Battle Boredom

In every job there are some boring tasks you don't like to do. When we're bored, we seek and easily find distractions. Every time a new email arrives in our inbox, we stop and read it. A prospect pops into our mind and we spend 15 minutes on LinkedIn seeing if we'rwore linked to anyone new who works there. We remember an important detail about a project and go running to our customer service person's desk to discuss it in person…the list goes on.

Do you want to spend less time on boring tasks? Quit giving into distractions! Don't stop, start, stop and start. Buckle down and get the job done so you can move onto the tasks you enjoy.

When Perfectionism Wastes Time

Some tasks get way more effort and attention than they deserve. Why? Because we bought into the maxims like, "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well."

If the outcome is the same whether you invest 10 minutes or 30 minutes on a task, perfectionism won't pay off. Lower your standards. Sometimes adequate is enough. This is a smart strategy which can help you accomplish more in your already packed day.

Stop Waffling and Decide

Every salesperson makes thousands of decisions every day. When you waffle over what to do, you chew up precious time.

If you find yourself unable to make a decision, ask three questions:

1. What outcome do you want to achieve?

2. What do you need to know in order to achieve this outcome?

3. What action can I take right now to move forward towards success?

Answering these questions stops you from wasting time by providing a decision-making framework to narrow the list of possible options so you can pick the best one.

Work within a time limit. If you spend five minutes on a problem and are still unsure of what to do, switch gears and work on something else. Come back later and revisit the problem. Often putting a little distance between you and the issue is the best way to solve the problem.

Boy Scouts and Salespeople Should be Prepared

Some days, miracles happen. You finish all your urgent tasks, your "must dos." No one is knocking on your door asking for help and there's nothing new in your inbox. You're thrilled! Finally, you can focus on selling.

What exactly should you do now? Hopefully you have a list of "should dos" and "like to dos" from which you can quickly pull from to make best use of your time. Pick the task(s) that have business building potential!

Ben Franklin said, "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." When a block of time opens up during the day, be ready to grab hold of those precious minutes and do something. Even if you only accomplish a single task, you are better off for doing so.

Are You Ready?

We all have crazy-busy times but even on the busiest days, the following techniques can help increase your selling bandwidth.

1. Arrive at the office 30 minutes earlier and spend this time on business building activities.

2. If you find it hard to concentrate on new business development in your office, change your scenery. Do something different if you want different results.

3. Take breaks.

4. Battle boredom. Buckle down and get tiresome tasks done so you can move onto more interesting activities.

5. Know when perfectionism wastes time. When you can achieve a satisfactory outcome with less effort you free up time for other tasks.

6. Stop waffling and make a decision.

7. When a block of time opens up, be prepared to use it for business building activities.

Put these bandwidth-widening tips and techniques to use and be more productive. Have more time to sell and reach your goals faster. Success is closer than we think-if we are willing to take a new direction.

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