8 Time Management Hacks For Medical Sales Reps
“Time is money,” we have all heard that phrase that highlights the importance of time. For medical sales reps, it definitely has a paramount significance. Because by managing time efficiently, the sales reps could either close a million-dollar deal or have a door shut right in front of their face. Making a constant effort and spending time on certain activities could enable them to hit the monthly target or while spending time erroneously could lead them right to perdition.
Mastering time management is one of the most difficult soft skills for medical sales reps as they have a myriad of important tasks at hand. That makes it quite challenging to prioritize them based on urgency and importance.
Time Management Hacks for Sales Reps
- Always prepared to take a detour
- Focus on one task at a time
- Stop procrastinating on the difficult tasks
- Keep the Momentum Going!
- Schedule Your Day Around Your Leads
- Follow a Sales Sequence
- Avoid Distractions
- Optimize Meeting Procedures
These time management hacks help in efficiently manage time both in-office and on the field as well as boost productivity.
1. Always prepared to take a detour
As a medical sales rep, it’s better to organize your lead prospects by location and note the last contact lead. If an appointment flakes on you, it’d be easier for you to reach nearby prospects rather than going back to the office and cooling your heels for the next scheduled meeting.
Remember prospects cancel meetings at any time, so it’s always better to divert your focus to other profitable ventures. You can start prepping for the next prospect that’s on your schedule. If there isn’t any other scheduled meeting, then do follow-up calls for prospects and generate new leads. Keep in mind, prospecting is a thought-out process that requires a tremendous amount of effort and time. When someone stood you up, it’s the best time to utilize it for prospecting.
2. Focus on one task at a time
There is no such thing as multitasking. As a matter of fact, people who claim multitask are just simply quickly switching between tasks. And make quick switches deteriorates focus and decreases productivity as the brain has the readjust each the person making the switch.
From a medical sales perspective, a different mindset is required to perform different tasks. Let’s say giving a presentation of a product requires a different focus than managing your pipeline.
For example, in prospecting, generally, you probably do it by dialing your leads, expect a call or voice message to proceed to follow-up call or an email, and then document your activity in the log. It’s time-consuming and isn’t productive to keep repeating the cycle.
On the other hand, you can streamline this process by filtering all the important clients who would be available for your call or respond to your voice messages. You also need to leave personalized voice messages or follow-up emails to these prospects and put them on logging activity. In the way, you can further schedule the time you may want to reach them out again.
By following this process, you would be able to get more response from your prospects as well as boost your productivity.
3. Stop procrastinating on the difficult tasks
We have all been there where we just don’t want to deal with a certain task. Whether it may be logging activity, prospecting, doing follow-up calls or writing emails, etc.
We can all find various ways to divert our attention to avoid those important and urgent tasks we dislike doing it. However, indulging in other tasks will cost a lot of time, and at the end of the day, you probably have to do it anyways.
So, it’s better to swallow the bitter pill and complete that uncomfortable task and get this over with. As a matter of fact, do that task first, so you can do the rest of the tasks with a peace of mind.
4. Keep the Momentum Going!
When a medical sales rep succeeds in achieving a goal, they take a break to fully enjoy their achievement. Don’t get us wrong, it’s good to feel excited about meeting the sales target. However, it’s also the ideal time to keep going forward and make some more calls and set up more appointments with your leads, general physicians, and surgeons.
Don’t underestimate the power of momentum. When you have it, you will have plenty of more reasons to pat yourself on the back if you just keep moving forward.
5. Schedule Your Day Around Your Leads
The most ideal time to get connected with the potential leads, general physicians, and surgeons is during lunchtime. Generally, doctors have a hectic schedule, and it takes hours to get in touch with them. Nevertheless, they do take breaks during lunch, which is an excellent opportunity to meet with them and make an impact with the compelling sales pitch.
6. Follow a Sales Sequence
We aren’t fans of relying on repeated sales pitches, however, in the medical sales profession, you are dealing with the same nature of prospects almost every time. So, instead of creating a new strategy to reach every new general physician or leads, rather formulate a strategy that can easily be personalized accordingly.
It’s also wise to review the tried and tested strategies and implement them if they are applicable again and again. Let’s say you utilize the knowledge you found on Crunchbase in the majority of the recently closed deals. When you know it’s worth, you can use it again on closing other deals again.
7. Avoid Distractions
It’s certainly quite challenging to keep your focus on work, especially when you have tons of distracting websites just a click away. If you have Google Chrome, install Block site that would prevent distracting yourself from time-wasting websites, or you can use these instructions to block websites on your Mac.
8. Optimize Meeting Procedures
You can efficiently manage your time, but what about your leads? As we mentioned earlier, doctors, general physicians, and surgeons have a tight schedule. Even if you didn’t get stood up and manage to schedule a meeting with them, it would take hours to get in touch with them. To streamline the medical sales processes, the Preferred Times app is made to overcome this barrier between the doctors and medical sales reps for good.