Note: This article is based on a lightly edited transcript of a video conversation. The language has been kept conversational to preserve the speaker’s original tone and flow.
Time is your most valuable asset in sales, and it’s incredibly precious in every aspect of life. In sales, we can easily spend a lot of time on activities that keep us busy rather than truly productive.
In this piece, we highlight some of those activities and share practical ways to manage your time more effectively.
Something I’ve always emphasised with my team — and still do — is the need to be absolutely ruthless when it comes to dealing with distractions.
It’s so easy to jump from one shiny new thing to the next. That’s why managing your time is not just important, it’s essential.
Why Productivity Matters
On average, there are 233 business days in a year for salespeople — give or take one or two days.
How do we get that number? There are 365 days in a year. Subtract 104 weekend days, 20 days of holiday, and eight bank holidays, and you’re left with 233 working days to hit your targets.
When you look at it this way, you realise you don’t have much time to do everything required for sales productivity, from building relationships to managing your sales pipeline.
Traditionally, we measure sales success by results — the value we deliver, the number of deals we close, and the revenue we generate. But to truly improve sales performance, we also need to look at how we work.
Our daily activities and behaviours drive results. How we use our time is critical to sales time management and long-term success.
Common Sales Productivity Challenges
We often spend too much time on unnecessary admin. Of course, some admin is essential in sales, but it’s our responsibility to manage it effectively.
The second issue is mindset. Sometimes our approach to certain activities isn’t quite right. We tend to see them reactively rather than proactively, and that mindset ultimately shapes how we tackle the tasks we need to complete.
Thirdly, one of the biggest sales productivity challenges I see is a lack of preparation. Too often, we try to figure things out in the moment. We arrive at a situation — it could be a discovery call or a conversation with a new client — and in the heat of the moment, we’re deciding what to do, what to say, and what the next step should be. This lack of preparation is a major productivity barrier.
Finally, qualification is critical. When we don’t properly qualify opportunities or understand where the buyer is, where we are, and where we want to take them, we set ourselves up for failure.
Here’s how it usually plays out: I’ve seen it in many sales organisations — when we don’t ask the right questions, we might think a client is ready to buy, but in reality, they’re still in research mode. Two or three months later, when we ask, “Are you ready to close?” they reply, “No, we’re still researching.”
All of these sales productivity challenges ultimately affect our ability to be productive.
Other Time Wasters
There are many other time wasters in sales, and we need to proactively minimise these distractions.
For example, salespeople tend to be overly optimistic and rarely schedule enough time to complete all the activities they need to.
If you’re doing something for the first time, you might allocate 30 minutes or an hour, but realistically, it will take twice as long. My advice: when tackling something new, add an extra 30–60 minutes. At worst, you’ll finish early and gain extra time.
Optimism aside, we also tend to be people-pleasers. Drop-in visitors, quick questions, or casual chats can break our focus. Setting boundaries is essential. There are two types of time: selling time and non-selling time.
I like to treat the hours between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. as prime selling time. This period is sacrosanct for client calls, meetings, and demos — focusing on the client’s needs. Outside of these hours, dedicate yourself to admin, emails, proposals, and other non-client-facing tasks. Clients and prospects are less likely to engage outside of prime selling time.
Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes it’s worth calling a contact early to avoid the gatekeeper. The key is to plan and prepare, always thinking about how to maximise your productivity.
Another major distraction I see is a lack of self-discipline. Moving from task to task without a clear list of priorities creates ad hoc work and removes structure. Constantly switching focus prevents you from giving important work the attention it deserves, ultimately reducing productivity.
Individually, these issues may seem minor, but collectively, they can significantly hamper your effectiveness and limit the results you achieve.
Productivity Focus Areas
Let’s break this down into three key focus areas.
Firstly, mindset and motivation. If you know me, you know I talk a lot about mindset. Your mindset shapes how you approach productivity. When you change your mindset, you influence your behaviour, and that behaviour directly impacts the results you achieve.
If your mindset is “I’ll just handle things on the fly as they come”, your behaviour will be sporadic and unstructured. You’ll move from conversation to conversation without focus.
Conversely, if your mindset is about thinking ahead, preparing, and planning, your behaviour will reflect that. You’ll have more structured, meaningful conversations, and ultimately, your results will improve. Mindset and motivation are crucial for maximising the time you spend on client-related work.
Secondly, preparation and planning. Benjamin Franklin famously said, “If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” Planning is essential to achieving the results you want and being productive. Map out what good looks like and allocate time for each activity: calls, demos, admin work, internal reports — everything. Protect your time by setting guardrails so that your precious hours are spent where they matter most.
Finally, pipeline discipline and process adherence. A major productivity killer is a lack of a structured sales process. Simply having stages in your CRM is not enough. To be ruthless and productive, you need to understand the objective of each stage and the criteria for moving opportunities forward. If those criteria aren’t met, don’t advance the opportunity.
Be strict with qualifications. For example, if a client says, “Don’t worry, we’ll find the money,” don’t just accept it at face value. Sense-check it. Ask, “Can you tell me the range you have available?” This ensures you’re not surprised later and that you’re focusing your time on qualified opportunities.
Ultimately, this discipline drives your sales pipeline. More productive salespeople maintain higher-quality pipelines, ensuring opportunities are in the right place and moving efficiently. Technology and tools can support this process, but it’s critical to decide upfront how to leverage them to achieve the results you want.
Sales Productivity Frameworks
The first productivity tool is the Eisenhower Matrix.
Essentially, this sales productivity framework tool helps you understand where you spend most of your time. There are four quadrants, and I want you to think about which activities you’re doing proactively or reactively and which quadrant they fall into.
Top right: Focus.
This quadrant is not urgent, but it’s extremely important. In fact, I’d argue it’s your most important work. This is where you take time to plan, develop your personal strategy, reflect on your motivators, and evaluate what’s working well and what needs to change.
Ask yourself: How often do you spend time on these activities? Quarterly? Monthly? Weekly? My experience is that most salespeople know they should do this, but they don’t schedule it. This is the most important time you can block in your calendar — proactively.
Top left: Priority.
This quadrant is for work that comes at you and must be done. Generally, it should account for about 20% of your activity, not 80%. This could be urgent client requests or managerial tasks. If everything feels like a priority, something is wrong with your process or environment.
Priority work is time-sensitive, often requiring work outside normal hours. That’s why measuring how much time you spend here is critical — it should be the exception, not the rule.
Bottom left: Busywork.
This quadrant involves tasks that are non-important but sometimes urgent, like sales admin. Many salespeople see admin as negative, but maintaining your CRM is crucial. The quality of your CRM input determines the quality of output. When set up correctly, it supports your work instead of hindering it.
Spend minimal time here, and reframe how you view these tasks. If you spend too much time in this quadrant, you’ll feel unfulfilled, lose motivation, and neglect your client-facing work.
Bottom right: Eliminate.
This quadrant is neither important nor urgent. Activities here sap energy and add no value. Examples might include requests from other departments unrelated to sales. Ask yourself: Is this urgent for me in my role? If not, eliminate it.
Reflect on your activities: Which fall into each quadrant, and how much time are you spending in each? The key is maximising proactive sales activities versus reactive tasks that drain your energy.
The second framework is the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle).
This principle states that 20% of your clients or activities will account for 80% of your results. For example:
- 20% of your clients may drive 80% of your revenue.
- 20% of your activities may deliver 80% of your results.
The goal is to identify which clients and activities contribute most to your results and focus your energy there.
Not all clients are in the same stage of readiness — some are ready to buy, upgrade, or engage differently. By identifying those 20% of clients or activities, you can achieve 80% of your results more efficiently.
Over time, the 20% will shift, so continuously reassess and adjust your focus. This ensures that your time is spent on the highest-impact activities, driving maximum sales productivity and results.
Now, you might ask: How do we measure all of this and track progress effectively?
Sales Activity Funnel
It’s all about understanding the activity that flows through your sales funnel.
To do this effectively, you need to understand your ratios. Look at the calls you make or take — how many convert into meetings, how many of those convert into proposals, and finally, how many convert into wins.
You might use different terminology — maybe discovery call → demo → proposal → win. Whatever your process, the key is to visualise the input-to-output flow and measure your ratios. Knowing your ratios tells you exactly where your time is going and highlights what’s draining your energy versus what’s productive.
I like to visualise it as: calls → meetings → proposals → wins. A practical way to understand your time investment in each stage is to reverse-engineer it:
- How many wins did you have over a 3-, 6-, or 12-month period?
- How many proposals did it take to achieve those wins?
- How many meetings were required to generate those proposals?
- How many calls did it take to set up those meetings?
Once you have these numbers, you can identify where to make adjustments to improve your results. Even if some stages seem fixed, there’s almost always room for improvement.
For example, if your call-to-win conversion rate is 1 in 10, your focus should be on improving that to 1 in 8, then 1 in 7. Doing so will generate more revenue and close more deals — ultimately improving your sales productivity.
Linked to this is deal velocity, a key metric every salesperson should track. Tracking this over time shows whether your sales process is becoming more effective and whether your productivity is translating into better results consistently.
Planning intentionally is crucial.
Productivity doesn’t improve by wishing for it; you need deliberate action. Start by changing your mindset toward productivity and the activities you perform. Reviewing your data and understanding where your time is spent allows you to identify areas for improvement, evolve habits, and ultimately change behaviour, which drives results.
I use a quarterly, weekly, and daily planning cycle:
- Quarterly (13 weeks): Review metrics, pipeline, and proactive activities. Spend 2–3 hours reflecting on what worked, what didn’t, and where to focus energy next.
- Weekly: Typically on Sundays, I spend 45 minutes planning the week — reviewing my calendar, prioritising calls, and mapping out tasks. Even when travelling, I maintain this planning to ensure business development activities continue uninterrupted.
- Daily: Avoid back-to-back online meetings. Allow time between sessions to take action on tasks, process information, and prepare for the next meeting. Use tools like recorders and transcribers to capture notes efficiently.
The key is being intentional with your sales time management. Planning prevents wasted time, ensures follow-ups happen promptly, and maximises the productivity of your client-facing work.
By consistently applying this planning cycle and understanding your funnel ratios, you can identify bottlenecks, enhance your sales effectiveness, and ultimately close more deals while making more effective use of your time.
Key Takeaways
Firstly, productivity = effectiveness × efficiency. Be ruthless with how you manage your time. Planning and preparation for sales success is absolutely crucial.
Secondly, planning. Know your ratios and your deal velocity. This insight will guide you in focusing your energy and effort for maximum impact.
Finally, process and pipeline. Discipline and adherence to your process are essential. Look for small, incremental changes you can make — these are what move the needle and improve results.
I’m not talking about massive overhauls. Even small adjustments, like improving your sales qualification or refocusing on the right opportunities, can have a big impact. If you find yourself spending too much time on opportunities that aren’t ready to progress, bring them back to the right stage and prioritise better.
Build a productivity-first sales culture. Even strong sales teams lose momentum without structure. At LSOS Sales Academy, we design sales training courses that help you:
– Strengthen sales qualification consistency
– Turn time management tips for salespeople into daily habits
– Build scalable processes that drive long-term results
