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There’s Just Not Enough Time – 11 Time Management Tips For Online Sellers

Kyozou / Better Sales Practices  / There’s Just Not Enough Time – 11 Time Management Tips For Online Sellers

There’s Just Not Enough Time – 11 Time Management Tips For Online Sellers

It’s spring. Things come back to life. You’re starting to feel a buzz in the air of a push for sales or new strategies. You’re feeling strapped for time so where do you begin when there just doesn’t seem to be enough time? As an online seller there are some time management tools you can use to help handle this feeling of being overwhelmed.

Time Management is a skill that you can learn and implement for yourself and your staff. As a growing online company, you need to have employees who are armed with the tools to help deal with how much there is to do in a day. Because some days, you don’t know where to start as there are too many loose ends. Or if it’s a Monday, you have tonnes of orders that came in which you need to ship out. At the same time you have other tasks that are piling up. How do you manage it all?

Here’s 11 time management tips you can try to help manage your day:

  1. Mentally prepare for your day: On your commute into work, kick start your day with some pumped up music if you need. Or, if you want to learn something, download a podcast and listen to it. It can help prepare your mind and set your attitude for the day.
  2. Create your to do list: Take the first 30 minutes when you get in to create your to do list. This includes the things you have to get done and want to get done. If there are things that need to be done by the end of the week, include the deadline to help keep that task on the list.
  3. Set priorities: You have a lot to do. Identifying the items by priority will help get you started. Priorities can be organized based on your strategies. For example anything related to sales or customers should be deal with first. Or maybe it’s by the largest revenue maker.
  4. Stay organized: or at least try to stay organized. This may be some work to get set up, but organizing will help you and your staff be able to jump in and and help out. It makes it easier to find things and not waste time looking for where something was the last time someone “thought they saw it there”. Organizing things in the flow of how orders for shipment are processed helps streamline things too.
  5. Learn to let go: Go on, delegate! Give up some control so you can tackle other higher priorities. You hired people for their skills and abilities. Use those to the best of your advantage. Sometimes your staff wants to have additional responsibilities. 
  6. Just say no: It’s ok to say no when you’re asked to do things that are not a part of what you need to get done, especially if there are other higher priorities. You need to stay focused on the bigger picture to keep those sales coming in.
  7. Give yourself time: You already know that when you go to tackle something you can get interrupted or it takes you longer than you think. When planning the time to do something, give yourself some padding. More often than not, it takes longer than you think. Which is why you feel like you’ve ran out of time. Interruptions happen, fires need to be put out – so plan time for it. 
  8. Break things up: For a large project, it can be easier to break them up into smaller chunks. Plus if it’s a mind boggling project, small chunks make it easier to handle and wrap your head around so you can proceed to the next step. 
  9. Take time to give thanks: Your employees work hard for you. Be sure to thank them when you can when they do good work. It helps drive them to go over and above. That over and above time is always welcome, especially during high sales times. 
  10. Take a breath or two: Taking 10 long breaths in and out can help centre you so you can take a moment for yourself before heading back into what you still need to get done.
  11. Record your thoughts: when you’re busy, sometimes a great idea pops in your head. But you can’t stop to think it through. Write it in your notepad or as a note on your cell phone and go back to it later. This helps you stay on track.

It’s ok if you don’t get through everything in a day. Time management is a skill. Therefore you need to work on building these skills. They can become learned and a lot of the most successful business people still use these skills in their daily lives. Try some of these out to find out which work best for and your staff.

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