Time can be quite a paradox. On the one hand it is never-ending and yet it is finite. Time is finite because we can separate it into natural or random units. A day is a natural unit of time while its segmentation into 24 hours is an arbitrary selection. All attempts to change this segmentation in favour of a decimal system have failed in the past. Now as always the sales representative counts his time in hours and minutes and there is never enough of it. Time management is meant to relieve pressure and to avoid stress. Good time management is always an advantage.

How to deal with time
- a resource which knows neither rich nor poor

Time makes no difference between the poor and the rich. All managers, sales representatives and clients have only 24 hours available in a day. Therefore it is wrong to say "I don't have time for this". It's better to say that I would rather use my time to do different things. A customer might prefer to dedicate his time to administrative tasks and only reluctantly spend time with a sales representative.

Since everyone has the same time budget on their hands, the correct investment of available time is decisive for success. A sales representative is a member of the external sales force. Time spent in the office means he is not on the job and that he has invested his time wrongly.

Golden rules for time management in the sales force

- Visiting time belongs to the customer - don't do administrative work if you could spend time with customers.
- Recognise and remove time thieves - you can make a break when the customer makes a break.
- Create schedules with good measure - leave enough but not too much time for reserves
- Stick by your schedules - the first customer call of the day has to be on time
- There are no excuses for abusing your time budget (I had to quickly return to headquarters...??!)
- Look at invested time from a business point of view - input/output = efficiency

Task scheduling and time investment

General Eisenhower is alleged to have organised his time on the basis of a very simple system in order to remove the bottleneck time. The so-called Eisenhower principle takes the importance and urgency of a task into account:

- Field A: important and top priority task
- Field B: top priority but less important task
- Field C: important task which can be deferred
- Rubbish bin: the task is neither important nor urgent

The standards for importance and urgency are business objectives which are also part of the objectives for sales representatives. A business specialising in public works which has declared the contribution margin an important reference criteria will categorise a public tender with good contribution margin prospects as A. In contrast, it will allocate category B or C to the inquiry of a private customer for whom the CM ABC analysis resulted in a C rating. Working in accordance with the Eisenhower principle requires decision-making competence and a sound judgement for the distinctions of X and Y. If the sales representative is lacking these characteristics, he runs the risk of placing all tasks on field A, preventing all attempts at time management. As a matter of fact, field A has the largest share of the current time budget allocated to it. In this sense the Eisenhower principle can also be applied to vehicle routing and scheduling. A-customers are serviced in each selling round, while in the B and C sector exceptions in favour of A-customers are more likely.

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