Black In Business

How do you plan your business day? Do you get up in the morning and let it fly. Time is an friend but if used unwisely it becomes an enemy. Effective Time management has been a growth area for me over my career.
As a young salesman, I was responsible for sales of capital equipment in a 6 state area. I covered the area by car and some opportunities were a 10 hour drive from my Baltimore home. I would sell 30 units of 50,000 dollar blood testing equipment mainly to hospitals and medical centers.
This was an activity based selling strategy, meaning the more; calls, demonstrations, and proposals I did, the more business I would close. I quickly found there were only so many hours in a day and each sale was worth as much as 3000 dollars, a lot of jack in those days.
The most exciting activities for me were closing calls, where you asked for the business, demonstrations, where you ran the product by installing in the hospital lab and tested their sample. This was show time and I would come out of my bag with a compelling presentation, and presenting the proposal which often times would become a closing call.
It would be easy to cancel your plans for the rest of the week, drive all night to another part of the territory for a chance at one of these activities. It was a very bad habit. I learned to work my territory by always planning at least 1 week in advance. Meaning on Thursday I had plans for the next Thursday firm. I cut my territory into quadrants and would work my assigned appointments by quadrant. If I was in
Elkins, West Virginia for a demo on a Tuesday, I would schedule appointments the rest of the week in West Virginia and part of Virginia. I would travel on Monday and have key event appointments twice a day. These were appointments that I had to be sure to make in order to move the call along. I filled in my time by cold calling or working the phone.
When my customers saw my time was important to me it and I became more important to them.
How do you plan your time, can you do better? Here is a link that may help you or help you help others plan better.