As a sales professional, time is your only inventory. You need to be 100 percent absolutely positive that you’re doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.

There is a myriad of things that can waste a sales professional’s time, but if you have solid goals and attempt to achieve them, you should be able to weed out the time wasters and continue to ad value to your life.

Here’s an example of wasted time you don’t even think twice about because it’s time, your time. Say a co-worker stops you in the hall and demands $150. Of course you say no because you know the value of $150 and you won’t just give them that kind of money; however, you allow this same co-worker to hijack your time by dragging you into a meeting that has nothing to do with you or your sales process for hours on end. Where is the value in that? Time is money.

One of the main keys to successfully managing your time is to take back control of it. Take charge of your own time and attention. Don’t be to quick to give other people power to boss you around or delegate their work to you, unless that is your job, to help others and only if you have the time and it is a learning experience or can ad some other type of value to your life or goals. Also, don’t get caught up in reading countless articles or data on the Internet or magazines, a few will keep you up to date, so will watching the evening news. Time wasters don’t get home in time to watch the news, but professional salespeople do.

One of the major time wasters of culture today is e-mail. It can take up to a day to catch up and most of it isn’t as important as the subject line indicates. Use the folders feature in your e-mail program. Make a folder for anything addressed to multiple recipients, another for ‘press releases’ and another folder for ‘urgent.’ This way, you will not be checking your e-mail every few minutes of the day. Set aside a certain time, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, perhaps before you go out on a sales call or take a break, to check and respond to an e-mail.

If you work with a team, get them together and discuss a mutual subject line for e-mails and tell them of your plan with the e-mail folders. Hopefully, this will catch on with the rest of the team and time wasting will be cut down. Another thing you might want to discuss with your team while you have them all gathered together is questions and answer time in addition to quiet work time. If you have a conference room, you could all set up in there, say, every other day, and work independently of one another, but if questions arise or if someone needs help, you are all right there. No hunting for someone who may be busy doing other work.

The same goes for quiet time. Designate a period of time, everyday or every other day, which ever works best for you and your team, so that no one interrupts each other. Everyone remains quiet and to themselves for the duration of the quiet time. Of course if there is an emergency, a client or customer on the phone, that is different. I am talking about your co-workers and time wasting with constant questions or interruptions of other kinds.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating; learn to say “no.” If it’s hard for you to say “no” try using words like “kinda interested” or “maybe later” or “I’ll need a little more information,” then make your decision to help this person based on the information and the amount of valuable time you have to spare.

“My interest is in the future; as I’m going to be spending the rest of my life there.” Charles Kettering

The major problem facing sales professionals today is an extended and unpredictable sales cycle. As I explained above, it’s a vicious cycle that ends in last minute decisions, often with your competition the winner of your sale. Here are a few ways to avoid and or deal with the sales cycle.

• Take the sales cycle seriously. Of course there are going to be exceptions, but they are not the rule. Everyone looks for ‘ripe fruit’ – the prospective client who must make a buying decision now – but that’s the exception and it’s mostly the result of luck not sales skills.

Although there are the lucky sales, they should never be thought of as the norm. The extended sales cycle is the standard working environment for all sales professionals.

• Connect with what counts. Relationships are critical to be sure, but because of the Internet, buyers are much better informed and they can spot incompetence much more quickly. Customers know when someone is just trying to sell them something. The other side of blowing smoke is being blown away by a potential client who demands knowledge and expertise from their suppliers and are willing to settle for nothing less.

The goal is to impress the prospective client with what you know, not where you take them to lunch.

• Focus on the potential client. Even though the question seems basic to sales, but sales professionals rarely ask: “What do you want to accomplish?” And, even if it is asked, they almost always come across in a less then genuine way. As if the salesperson is really only interested in getting the answer and moving on to his or her presentation.

Finding out what the potential client wants is one of the keys to the sale. How can you give a meaningful, powerful and compelling presentation if you have not taken into consideration what the potential client wants to accomplish?

The test is how the potential client feels after the presentation. Was the focus on what the sales professional wanted to get across or was it on obtaining the necessary information to make an informed proposal?

• Patient follows through. The anxious sales professional says “I need sales now!” Well, who doesn’t? But the questions miss the essential issue. What sale professionals need are customers and customers don’t come quickly. Rather, they occur over time, by patience.

Those salespeople who say they need to make a sale are letting the cat out of the bag. They are telling the world that they haven’t identified the need of the potential client or cultivated a relationship with that prospect.

These salespeople are like the hunters of big game, they want to be driven, in a Hummer, to the exact spot where the animals gather, shoot them, bag them, then be driven back to the lodge to ‘tell their big game adventure.’ That isn’t hunting and it isn’t sales. Both require careful planning and massive amounts of persistence and extraordinary patience.

• Communicate competence. Some sales professionals like to talk about their products or services are innovative, cutting edge and far above the competition. Potential clients prefer to see a salesperson that is innovative and cutting edge.

A marketing consultant was asked to prepare a brochure. He asked the client: “Why do you want a brochure and what are you going to do with it?” By digging deeper, the consultant found that the company’s sales force was actually looking for help with prospecting and the thing that came to mind was a brochure. Needless to say, the brochure was scraped and a prospecting program was implemented.

Another key to making sales is coming up with the right solutions to the right problems.

• Plan for the long-term. ‘Making numbers’ is a Damocles sward over every salespersons head. Translation, it means, the urgency of the immediate demands total attention. Today, that is something that never changes.

The solution is to identify, carefully cultivate and manage a substantial number of prospective clients over the long-term. The more precise and efficient you are with this process, the greater the flow of sales you will enjoy.

• Counsel the customer. The president of an insurance company called a salesperson in and wanted her to help them promote a new business initiative. After working on it for a month, she less than enthusiastic about the assignment. She asked herself, “Why do I feel this way?” The answer was easy; the president was clearly interested in only selling the product. The shortcut to success ended in a short circuit for the operation.

The sales task is to covet the customer relationship more than the order. The privilege of being able to provide helpful, valuable assistance to a customer is what creates sales.

• Stay on track. Staying on track is another key to long-term sales success. It’s easy to fall prey to the latest quick fix sales gimmick and when that fails, find another one.

The answer is to stay on track, stay with sound principles and understanding the sales environment. Focusing on the prospects, communicating your competence, planning for long-term and being the customer’s trusted advisor are some of the ways you can stay out of the sales cycle that can turn the best salespeople into desperate salespeople.

“The better your relationships the shorter your sales cycle and the more money you will make.” Dan Brent Burt