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Cus­tomer focus above all?

Some of us, those whose tasks include receiv­ing cus­tomer inquiries, prepar­ing pro­pos­als, send­ing quotes, and clos­ing deals, may find it hard to pre­dict what they’ll need to devote their day to. Cus­tomers call and email con­stant­ly. When cus­tomers don’t get in touch, it’s time for active, out­ward-fac­ing sales work instead.

Always, their focus is on the cus­tomer and dri­ving more busi­ness – of course.

The long term also has its value

That’s how it should be in such roles. It’s just that many in those pro­fes­sions also have oth­er tasks that aren’t direct­ly relat­ed to sell­ing. They can be more long-term tasks, which don’t pro­duce notice­able results now, but lat­er. These tasks can cre­ate bet­ter con­di­tions for doing the sales work itself.

At every moment, it may seem entire­ly obvi­ous that what­ev­er direct­ly con­cerns the cus­tomer must be pri­or­i­tized above all else. How­ev­er, if the oth­er tasks don’t receive their fair share of time, it will ulti­mate­ly cost more.

A messy dis­or­der can grad­u­al­ly devel­op, which even­tu­al­ly needs to be addressed when it becomes a hin­drance to sales work. The flow of new inquiries may dry up if the long-term cul­ti­va­tion isn’t done.

The deci­sion is yours

If cus­tomers keep get­ting in touch all the time, there won’t come a nat­ur­al stop­ping point when you’re done with sales and can move on to oth­er tasks. Instead, you need to decide your­self when to stop sell­ing for now. Is it when you can’t man­age any­more, or is it a bit ear­li­er, when you still have the ener­gy and time left for the more long-term work?

More of the same?

For an effi­cien­cy enthu­si­ast like me, it would be nat­ur­al to sug­gest that you stream­line your sales work so you also have time for oth­er tasks. But if you don’t con­scious­ly decide to let go of sales, you’d prob­a­bly use the freed-up time to sell even more – because there’s always more com­ing in.

So, what’s need­ed here is a struc­ture that allows time and space for both the long-term and the direct­ly customer-focused.

Do this

If you rec­og­nize your­self in let­ting your cus­tomers con­trol your time, and you also want time for oth­er tasks,

1. Con­sid­er how much time per week you’d be will­ing to test let­ting go of cus­tomer focus and instead work on the oth­er tasks. If we agree that you can’t work 100% with inten­sive sales, what’s the rea­son­able share you can spend on that while still hav­ing time for oth­er things? 75%? 95%? 80%? I under­stand if it feels chal­leng­ing to turn away from cus­tomers for a while. Then start small. Could you spare two focused hours per week? Or three?
   
2. Find out when it would cost the least to throt­tle the inflow of busi­ness. How does the inflow of new inquiries spread across the hours of the week? When is it usu­al­ly a lit­tle qui­eter? When is the risk low­est that you’ll miss that big, juicy deal that drops in? If you don’t already have sta­tis­tics, log the num­ber of incom­ing inquiries per hour for a cou­ple of weeks to get a sense of the volume.
   
3. Spread out your non-cus­tomer-focused time dur­ing the ​“cheap” hours of the week in a way that suits you. Is it bet­ter to have sev­er­al short ses­sions, or would one longer block work bet­ter? Put the time in your cal­en­dar so it’s vis­i­ble and you can plan around it. (If some­thing urgent still comes up that forces you to move it, don’t delete it, shift it like a slid­ing puzzle.)
   
4. When your non-cus­tomer-focused time comes, block the inflow com­plete­ly. Set email to offline mode. Turn on ​“do not dis­turb” on your phone.
   
5. If you want to be sure that your busi­ness doesn’t miss any oppor­tu­ni­ties, agree with a col­league who also needs time for oth­er things, so you cov­er for each oth­er. When your non-cus­tomer-focused time occurs, let your col­league mon­i­tor your inflow. For­ward calls and redi­rect all incom­ing emails for a while with a mail rule you can eas­i­ly switch on and off when needed.

Bet­ter sales in the long run

If you con­scious­ly ded­i­cate time when your plan rules, regard­less of what cus­tomers want, you’ll also get those impor­tant tasks done that oth­er­wise con­stant­ly hang over you. In the moment, it might feel like a wrong deci­sion to miss out on valu­able sales time, but if the tasks you do instead are impor­tant for you and the busi­ness in the long term, your oper­a­tional sales work will ben­e­fit over time.

How do you do it?

What tricks do you have to both find time to serve cus­tomers who con­stant­ly show up and to work on oth­er, long-term mat­ters? Please write to me and let me know. I often encounter this issue with cer­tain pro­fes­sions (I count myself among them, in fact), and I’m always on the look­out for inno­v­a­tive meth­ods that can help. 

(Speak­ing of get­ting tasks done, feel free to also have a look at my short video: Four tricks to help you pri­or­i­tize impor­tant tasks!)