The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [9]
I realized that I had to learn how to effectively manage my time, so I took a time management course. In the first 20 minutes, the trainer handed out a work sheet instructing us to track our time over the next three months. At the end of the three months, we were supposed to identify where we were wasting our time. As a person running nine divisions, I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, “If I had the time to track my time for three months, I would not need a time management course.” I got up and left the seminar.
Over the years I have broken time management down to six simple steps that take five minutes to complete. Why? Because good time management shouldn’t take a lot of time. That’s also why this is the shortest chapter in the book.
This chapter will present six simple steps for time management. It will be very logical and you will understand it completely. You will agree with all of the principles and you will know that they will absolutely improve your productivity. But do you have the pigheaded discipline to spend the five minutes every day to take control of your time and then the even more pigheaded discipline to stick with the plan throughout the day? If you have a staff, do you have the pigheaded discipline to police these six simple steps throughout your entire staff? If you do, the payoff will be huge.
Let’s get into it: do you function mostly in a reactive or a proactive mode? In my experience, most businesspeople don’t take the time to plan and take action because all of their time is consumed by reacting to the business they’ve already built. To build your business into the Ultimate Sales Machine, you need to be in a primarily proactive mode. Time management is crucial.
Imagine what it would be like if you were suddenly thrust into managing or running a $50 billion company. Do CEOs of giant corporations have more hours in the day than you do? Of course not. But they do need to be masters of this crucial competency: time management. They need to be absolute experts in managing their own time and have the systems in place to make sure that every one in their organization is skilled in time management as well. Once you understand the time management secrets of running a multibillion-dollar company, you’ll have no trouble managing your sales activities, if you’re in sales, or getting your company or department to function at its maximum productivity.
My Time Management Epiphany
You’ve heard of the “one-minute manager.” Well, I was the “got-a-minute manager.” All day long, every day, various folks on my team would come to me and ask me if I had a minute to talk, and a “got-a-minute meeting” would break out right then and there. In fact, the entire company was run by got-a-minutes. Anyone could go to anyone else any time and a got-a-minute meeting would break out. My employees were in a reactive mode all day long. Although I had successfully grown each of my divisions by at least 100 percent within 12 to 15 months of taking them over, I was out of control and reacting 100 percent of the time. Even on vacation in Hawaii, I was receiving 15 faxes per day (this was before email became the newest time burner).
In contrast, when I had a meeting with Charlie Munger, I had to call his secretary and make an appointment. I had to have a strict agenda. I had to be on time and organized. Every meeting was highly productive and to the point. Then suddenly it clicked that I needed to take control of my time and my staff. So after a few years of working 12-hour days, every single day including weekends, I realized that in order to more successfully run and manage the divisions under my control, I had to get more organized and less reactive. I put out a memo effectively ending my “got-a-minute” management style. Here’s what it said:
To: Staff
From: Chet
Do not come to my door and ask if I have a minute. The answer will be no. Unless urgent, hold all thoughts, ideas, issues, or (nonurgent) concerns until the weekly division meeting.