Being a field sales manager was one of the most grueling, yet rewarding experiences of my corporate career. I remember hating these guys when I worked at corporate… I wondered why they got paid ridiculous sums of money, got nice company cards, huge expense accounts. Anyone could do what they do. So, I put my money where my mouth is and did it. I can tell you one thing, these guys earn 100% of their money and then some. If you paid a sales manager $250,000 a year where I was working, I would consider him underpaid.
Let’s talk about my day as a sales manager. I would get up at 4:30 AM and run 6-9 miles. I would return home to check email before leaving and usually be out the door by 6:30 to go ride in the field with a sales rep. We would make sales calls all day while my email inbox would pile up at home. After out last sales call, I would have to de-brief the rep and complete field travel reports. On a good day, I would be home by 7:00 PM and make dinner for my kids and tuck them in bed by 8:00 PM. Once the kids were in bed, I would log on to my computer and begin my office work. I’d have to answer hundreds of emails, fill out special forms, and complete multiple reports. My company was rated as having the highest administrative load for field sales managers in the entire industry… and it showed.
If there were no major emergencies, I would be done with my office work by about 1:00 AM. I would crash in bed and wake up at 4:30 the next day to do it all over again. This was a typical “at home day, but I also had two overnight trip per week and would have to fly out of state at least once a month for a sales meeting, training conference or other such nonsense.
What’s my point in all this? I quickly learned to be extremely efficient in everything I did. When you are working more than 90 hours a week, you don’t have time to waste time. You can’t let the little things distract you. You can’t waste time with mundane tasks that don’t add any value to your work.
What are you doing in your day that’s wasting time?
If you had to cut ten hours out of your work week, how would you do it?
Tags: business planning, focus, strategic planning, strategic thinking, Strategy
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