Your Most Valuable Asset

Oftentimes when you're in a room full of salespeople and you ask the question “what is your most valuable asset”? Many will respond that it is some sort of character consideration or tactic that they use in the process of selling. However, the accurate answer is: the most valuable asset you have not only as a salesperson but also as an executive or business owner is the asset of TIME. The fact of the matter is that time, by nature, is uncontrollable, so being strategic in your ability to effectively manage time is the very best way to make sure that you are using that asset in the best way to be able to eliminate wasteful investments in your business while maximizing those characteristics of your business that bring in the highest level of revenue and the greatest level of team satisfaction.

Some of the greatest executives in history have mastered the ability to use time effectively and in doing so, have eliminated a lot of the minutiae which tends to overburden a company and distract the organization from its core tenant of creating revenue and delivering customer satisfaction. So how does one become a master of time? The first and most important aspect of being able to gain more control of the aspect of time is ensuring that each day you have a strong plan of outcomes and that your schedule serves that plan. Time should only be invested in forward progress, while making sure the resources in the company that are not directly attributed to revenue generation are tasked with making sure that non-revenue activity is effectively handled so that customer satisfaction, product quality and employee functionality and satisfaction are met. Too many times when we work with companies, we find that key aspects of non-revenue generation are being tasked to people whose time is much more valuable in their role of creating revenue. Asking a salesperson to focus on project management details often is one of the key moments where you see the breakdown in using the salesperson's time effectively, causing a disturbance in revenue generation. Even executives who should be more oriented towards time management often allow their time to be infringed upon from organizational issues that could be better handled and only presented to the senior management for a final decision. This is why many companies have determined that the top-down management approach doesn't work as well as a bottom-up management approach because in top-down style senior management needs to be engaged in the whole process to get a decision made versus simply being at last resource in the chain that can ensure the proper thinking and dispositions have been generated and now only need a final sign off.

The reason that salespeople tend to be distracted with non-revenue generating activity is because there simply aren’t good handoffs or processes that allow them to download their commitments to the project management team to see successful project execution and completion. As you're thinking about time and it's significant in your company's ability to grow, it is critical to think about your current weekly investments of time and how those are impacting you today. Once you realize after a thorough evaluation of the current time investments you are making that are not resulting in revenue or growth, you will be more apt to want to make sure that the right processes and people are in place to create pathways that do not distract from putting the highest priority on making sure that the organization is financially fed.