Batch processing – essential for your working day
Do you flit from task to task?
Here are some interesting statistics that show just how much time we can waste when we get distracted:
According to a joint report by Qatalog and Cornell University’s Idea Lab, people take an average nine and a half minutes to get back into a productive workflow after switching between digital apps.
Another report found that getting side-tracked by other tasks cost an average of 25 minutes before people returned to their original task, partly because they were distracted by other tasks before getting back to what they were doing.
The same article shows that many people waste one and a half hours a day getting back to their original tasks after breaking off to check email.
Most of us could work more efficiently
Rather than keeping chopping and changing, it is better to batch your tasks. Spend an hour making sales calls. Then manage your e-mails for 30 minutes. Then move on to managing estimates or chasing up pdfs.
When you work in this fashion, you tend to stay “in the zone”. You become accustomed to making sales call after sales call. The estimates seem to flow out with less effort. This is because the brain is used to dealing with a task. It is ready for the next similar one. It doesn’t have to move from sales call mode to estimate mode so often.
What about customer queries?
Shouldn’t we should answer these straight away?
That interrupts the brain’s flow. We may become seriously distracted.
The reality is that most customers can wait a little while. I am not suggesting that you leave clients for hours on end waiting for an answer. But queries rarely have to be dealt with instantly. They can wait until the end of your sales hour or your estimate session.
Try this out
Be sure to let me know what you think!
How do you use your sales hour most effectively?
Check out “How To Succeed At Print Sales”: I outline how to create sales plans that achieve results, even if you only spend an hour at a time working on them.
