More Sales, Less Time: Surprisingly Simple Strategies for Today's Crazy-Busy Sellers
Jill Konrath is to the point, sharing her journey and exercise examples you can apply today.
We all struggle with time management and all want to be superstars in our fields. In her new book, More Sales, Less Time: Surprisingly Simple Strategies for Today’s Crazy-Busy Sellers, Jill Konrath shares her own personal journey toward balance and success, candidly providing pithy observations, relatable struggles, and tried and true options to overcome obstacles.
In the first part of this concise and impactful book, “Accept the Challenge,” the author reveals the catalyst for compelling path to self-discovery, which is filled with honest and revealing events. Readers will instantly see themselves in her depiction of a period of her life when she needed to generate sales without the luxury of time. Konrath clearly shares the actions she took to successfully change her behaviors, resulting in more sales in less time. Her approach has been refined and perfected over time, the end result being reflected on the pages.
Konrath makes us realize that the pain points we all face when trying to generate additional revenue are virtually identical. Like scheduling time for a doctor’s appointment, she advocates that we need to carve out time to get a real, honest analysis of our daily lives and behaviors. Using her own daily life as an example, the author shines a light on what most of us go through and how easily we become distracted.
In the next part of the book, “Recover Lost Time,” Konrath shares how she assessed her productivity using mobile apps. This activity formed the foundation by which she was able to set goals, track progress, and start to cultivate a better way to work.
Konrath offers a shocking reality check of how easily we squander our precious time, becoming stuck in a constant loop of being interrupted and then recovering from our interruptions. Konrath offers the following as a prime example, "Say you check e-mail every ten minutes, six times per hour. Now, assuming each check take thirty seconds, your minimum recovery time equates to three hundred seconds. That means it takes the next five minutes to fully get your head back into the task at hand."
By becoming aware of how much time is truly being sucked out of our days due to our faulty prioritization, we can take actions that will end up saving time. Konrath even makes concrete suggestions as to what email plugins or apps to use and how to organize your workspace to recapture more value in your every day.
In part three, entitled “Get More Done,” readers should get out their highlighters and prepare to read and reread, applying the various exercises to find the magic formula of what works best for you. Konrath’s exercises help you redesign the way you work through use of chunks and time blocks; grouping activities together that require the same frame of mind so you can flow from one activity to another. Konrath provides a plan for you to invite razor focus to your day and solidify what really matters to you.
To help your mind focus, she recommends writing down all of your to-do’s and then focus on ONE Thing that you can do today—just ONE Thing. Another eye-opening exercise is to categorize priorities into 3 buckets: pipeline, planning, and producing, carefully explaining each one. Shorter lists offer a great sense of relief and truly results in producing more in less time.
The author shares the significance of incorporating a quitting time or working on a split schedule to gain more productivity. An experiment that I tested was the Pomodoro Experiment, which uses a timer to train your mind to work in 25 minute sprints, take time off to reenergize yourself, and do it again. By doing so, I found that I could better focus on the ONE Thing that I needed to get out of the way.
Shifting away from time management, in Part four, “Make It Easier,” Konrath also takes you on an intriguing quest to master the as-if strategy. The goal is to “master the mind-set that enables you to make better decisions about time, for good.” When you change your behavior and act “as if” your emotions change, too. Konrath also shares simple strategies for delivering strong and meaningful value propositions which result in increased sales.
The last parts of the book explores the importance of bringing fresh ideas, insights, and information to clients that can help them deal with emerging situations. The book merits that if you can create a viable vision for the future, you have a 74% chance of closing the sale (not too shabby!). Konrath explains how this can be achieved by looking at patterns with past clients and what caused them to make their purchase decision. The author also guides the readers through the relevant external that help accelerate sales when in discussion with prospects or customers.
The sample outreach messages and campaign processes provided in these sections are invaluable, helping you devise a repeatable formula for selling success, like a prospecting system that helps save time and focus on selling more. Another nugget of wisdom shares how to unclog pipelines, why deals get stuck, and how to address them. In Konrath’s opinion, top sellers focus on effectiveness and getting better, which is the flip side of efficiency.
One point of disagreement with the author is her advice to go over the heads of well-meaning prospects who may lack purchasing power. While it’s important to deal with the proper authority, Konrath’s approach in this area seems to pose a potential relationship risk.
Selling examples are primarily geared toward business to business, but the same principles and disciplines can be used when selling to consumers. Note: Konrath doesn’t tackle social media or PR tactics to generate leads. This is a must-read book, packed with concise, practical, and surprisingly simple strategies for the reader to get organized and sharpen focus and sell more in less time. Sounds pretty good!