How to Add More Selling Days without Really Trying

How many sales days do you have in a year?  Betcha you don't know!  Sales aka Selling days or how many days per month, per quarter and per year has been something that I keep an eye on.  Try to take a sales day away from me because you want to close the month early drives me up a wall.  Let's face it I only have "x" amount of days each month and I need to make the best of them.

Some dealerships or direct branches will close on the calendar end of the month. Others will close the month early so their "bean counters" can get a better handle of closing all of the sales by the end of the calendar month.

Some months have more selling days and some less, your job is to get a handle on how many days you have each month to attain your quota.  There are ways to add to your selling days, and the first would be to stop doing proposals and quotes during prime time (prime time would me 9AM-5PM), manage your proposals for 8AM-9AM and if you need more time, figure in some time at home to get out a few more.  If you spend 5 hours per week working on proposals during prime time and move them to non prime time you can gain and extra 20 hours per month or 2.5 additional selling days and add one extra month in 2013.  This could allow you to set an additional 5 appointments per week or give the extra couple of days to continue prospecting. I've always referred to this as "prospect by day and quote by night".

Believe it or Not!

It's Saturday morning, it's cold, rainy, windy and just a miserable day, can't do anything outside, there's nothing to do inside, what's a self motivated sales person to do?  Go to your CRM and dig out those 20 or 30 accounts that you've never been able to get a hold of Mr. or Mrs. Right, dial them up (yes on Saturday), you may be surprised that you'll get through to Mr. or Mrs. Right because they were thinking the same thing about the miserable Saturday but they choose to go to the office to get some additional work done!  This is not BS, I've done this from time to time.  Another avenue is if you contact the DM during the week and you can't come to terms with scheduling an appointment during the week, as them if they are in on Saturdays.  If you ever get a Saturday appointment these are the best, because the DM is not rushed (and neither are you),  they appreciate your effort to work on a day off.

Our first quarter 0f 2013 will consist of 61 selling days, the second and third quarters are 64 for each and the last quarter of the year will hold 62 selling days. Go figure, if you lose two selling days per month due to desire, sickness, vacation or goofing off you will lose one month of selling days. Can we really afford this?

-=Good Selling=-