How to Manage your Time as a Social Seller
Time management is key to running a successful social selling business. When sellers first join a business they’re often told they can fit it into small pockets of time, which is perfect for a side hustle to earn extra additional income. But, all too often, the business starts to consume every spare minute.
Megan Sumrell a fellow network marketer, and a Penny app lover and user, was where you are now and she thought there must be a better way. She became a time management expert and found a way to truly make this business fit into small pockets of time. Megan joined Penny to create a LevelUP course sharing her top time management saving tips to help you create the work-life harmony you deserve as you grow your business. 🎉
Let’s take a look at Megan’s 5 Time Management Principles.
1. Turn off the Noise
“Your phone should never talk to you unless you have told it to.” 📱
Make sure your phone isn’t dictating your day. Every time a notification pops up it distracts from the task at hand. To be able to strategically plan your day, you need to make sure your phone isn’t derailing your schedule.
Go into your mobile device and alter your audio and visual notifications:
- Turn off flashing notifications
- Set up notifications solely for your important contacts
2. Create Daily, Weekly and Monthly Checklists
Regardless of whether you’re brand new or been doing this for a while, it can feel like everything is coming at you at once: finding new customers, posting on social media, creating content, following up with customers, checking in on team members, etc. The point of checklists is to stop the constant shifting from activity to activity and instead sit down and have a plan of what should be done and when.
Find a quiet time and grab a piece of paper or open up a word doc and write down three lists. Daily, Weekly and Monthly tasks. Really focus on delineating what needs to be done daily, versus what can be done once a week, and what only needs to be done once a month.
3. Create Routines
It’s likely you have routines in your life, now it’s time to review your checklists and see how these activities can fit in around your daily routines.
Daily Activities
First look at what activities you want to do every day.
How much time do you want to spend on them?
Let’s say everyday you want to -
- Respond to customers (45 minutes)
- Engage on social media (20 minutes)
- Reachout to potential new customers (30 minutes)
- Check news from corporate and upline (15 minutes)
(Please note this is just a random example and not guidance on how you should spend your day)
Total Amount of Time
Add up the total amount of time you want to spend on your business each day.
110 Minutes = 1hr 50 minutes
But with your routine you probably don’t have a straight 1hr and 50 minutes a day to work on your business.
Routine Example
Here’s where the routine comes in. Take a look at your schedule and see where you can fit in 10 minutes, 30 minutes or even an hour.
Remember, your routine can be flexible and can change depending on the time of the year or your other current responsibilities.
4. Set Your Schedule
The next step is all about being intentional and making sure these routines are stuck to.
Calendarise your activity so you know it's going to get done!
- Go into your calendar
- Schedule your routine so nothing can take over your scheduled time
5. Keep all your information at your fingertips
Keeping organised is important so that you don’t waste time searching for information. When you sit down to do your work, you want to be able to dive right in and get down to business.
To keep all your information at your fingertips, you need three things:
- A central place where all your information is stored
- A tool to track your customers and prospects (Enter Penny!)
- A calendar system
1. The central hub of information is so you can track your data, your sales revenue, your expenses. Keep all your business information in the same place.
2. Penny is the perfect place to keep:
- Customer data
- Content
- Scripts
- Prospects data
- Customer related tasks
- Prospecting related tasks
3. A calendar is important so you can keep track of your routine! Don’t skip Stage 4.
Make sure you’re spending your time doing the work not searching for the information.
6. Plan Weekly not Daily
Planning daily is most people’s default. But, planning daily means you overload your day and try to run through every single item.
Planning weekly, gives you far greater oversight of what needs to be done, by when and how you can fit it all in.
Planning let’s you be present. Megan recommends planning on Sunday for the week ahead, assessing the other commitments you have, any one-off projects, etc and how that can fit into your week.
Change your mindset from tasks to appointments
- A task is something you need to do
- An appointment is something you can’t miss
Think of scheduling as making an appointment with yourself to sit down and get your tasks done.
Stick to the Schedule
Now, when you check your calendar and see that on Thursday you’ve scheduled Content Creation from 9 to 10, but you really don’t like Content Creation and feel like skipping... You can remind yourself that, you know you scheduled in Content Creation for 9 to 10 because that is the best time for you to do it, you have to do it now because there is no other time set aside in the schedule.
Make sure you’re spending your time doing the work not searching for the information.
Social Sharing
