The sales people I speak to tell me that focusing for long periods of time is hard to do, which causes them to not do what needs to be done – or at least less often than they know it needs to be done.
So I created Sales Sprinting just for them.
Required equipment to get started is minimal: You just need your calendar, and a timer you can set for up to 20 minutes.
You must block the time by adding your sprints to your calendar
If you don’t put it on your calendar, you won’t do it. Something else will ALWAYS come up.
Also, adding it to your calendar will help others see you are busy, so they won’t accidentally make another appointment on top of your sales sprint.
Create a 30 minute calendar appointment with the title being the task you’re going to focus on. This will also help you search for it later.
Prep for 5 minutes
Take 5 minutes of prep time to get your head on straight, to get whatever tools you need ready, to get everything shut down.
Make yourself totally unavailable
Turn off the notifications on your smartphone. Turn your ringer off and put the phone in airplane mode – unless you are doing a sprint with something on your phone.
Close your desktop email – unless e-mail is the focus of this sprint. Close every app on your computer that you don’t need right now.
If you won’t be using your computer, lock the workstation so you won’t be tempted by anything else.
And shut your door, hang a sign on your cubicle, or put your headphones on so people don’t interrupt you. It’s important you stay focused for the full time, or it won’t be as effective.
Sprint: 20 minutes
You know what to do.
Get to work!
Do the task for the full 20 minutes.
Don’t do anything else. Keep your head down and do the work. Don’t cheat yourself by doing anything else. Focus – and do the work for the full 20 minutes!
STOP! DO NOT KEEP GOING!
You just sprinted for 20 minutes. Just like if you were running at the gym, you are likely now tired, or at least sick of that task. It’s time to…
Recover for 5 minutes
Take 5 minutes and get away from your desk and take a walk around the office, go outside, go stare out the window, whatever you need to do to get your mind off the task you just did.
If you need to do more work, you can do one more cycle for 5-20-5, and you can do it 2 more times in the afternoon if you did it in the morning, no more than 2 sprints per 4 hour block.
The people I’ve trained and coached report getting more done in these 20 minute sprints than they do in half a day of unfocused time.
Some good tasks to do Sales Sprinting with include:
- Catching up on emails
- Filing
- Double checking paperwork
- Reading unread text messages
- Listening to voicemails
- Updating Salesforce
- Checking Slack
Considering doing another Sales Sprint?
Take 5 more minutes and check your notifications (Slack, Email, phone, whatever) and see if you have the time to do the Sales Sprint.
It is NOT recommended that you do more than 2 Sales Sprints in a row as you should be going as hard as you can for the entirety of the Sales Sprint. If you need more, you should block MORE TIME on your calendar so you can finish it all.
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